Thanks John Roberts.

For fixing the game to get the "correct" result on the scoreboard.  Too big to fail, govenment-policy style...

Mitch McConnell, meanwhile, gets the balance better, understands the political game better than the Chief Justice, as he should:

“For years, the president and his Democrat allies in Congress have sworn up and down that failing to comply with the individual mandate did not result in a tax on individuals or families,” the Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell (R) of Kentucky, said in a statement.

“And the reason was obvious: if Americans knew that failure to comply resulted in a tax hike, it never would have passed.”

In trying to "help" the legislation survive, Chief Justice Roberts had to invent the tax loophole. Where the administration consistently denied it was a tax, Roberts the magician suddenly changed the rules of the game: if it was a penalty, it was unconstitutional...

But if you twisted things this way and that, disregarded the people's political posturing -- which takes place in the House and the Senate, not on the Court -- then magically, the mandate was a tax.

A tax on those who don't consume medical services and then not pay for them, but oddly are punished for having better health than their neighbor.

Remember:
We're all in this together, even if we're collectively sinking under our own weight.

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Here's some clearly mistaken spin:

"This (analysis) doesn't change the basic fact that the individual responsibility policy will only affect people who can afford health care but choose not to buy it," said Erin Shields Britt of the Health and Human Services Department. "We're no longer going to subsidize the care of those who can afford to buy insurance but make a choice not to buy it."

Why not make that the policy then? No subsidizing THE CARE. Those who would consume medical care without a realistic plan for paying for it. Stop "taking all comers" at the ERs and doctors' offices then.

Making irrelevant those who do not participate in the system in any meaningful way, who don't run up big bills and then skip out on them. Don't scapegoat as "irresponsible" the strong and healthy not in need of annual medical services, procedures, prescriptions or contraceptives.

One justice pointed out -- if you promise unlimited care, somebody will eventually be asked to pick up the tab. Who? The millions of uninsured who don't treat, don't cost the system money, and who wish to retain this simple option of opting out.

aka,
Enjoy your own legally provided for contraceptives, people.
But don't ask uninvolved others to pick up your tab. You choose, you pay. Get a charity to provide it free, if you can...

But don't rely on the government to fund your freedoms.
It collapses when the branches collude, individual freedoms are taken from the people for the good of the majority (where have we heard that before?), and we shift the costs from the consumers/advocates to uninvolved others.

Don't punish those who do not participate in the system in any meaningful way, who don't run up big bills and then skip out on them.

The medical field is not immune from the same rules that govern every other business -- even a well-meaning Supreme Court justice can't change that.

Wait and see...

If John Roberts had simply done his job, with no nod to history or anyone's personal legacy, perhaps this temporary "fix" of Obamacare might have died a dignified death, on the table. Instead, I suspect we've simply prolonged the years of pain, with no significant fix to the underlying issues ailing the medical-profit/government-muddled system.

We'll be back here again, I predict -- debating the root causes of healthcare's systemic problems, and lamenting in retrospect how the policy "fix" simply helped mask the symptoms and let us turn our eyes away for a time, while the underlying rot of soaring medical costs continued to grow unimpeded.