Like many Americans this week I viewed a lot of online video clips of interviews of the late Supreme Court Justice, Antonin Scalia. Scalia had a lot to say about Obamacare and none of it was supportive of the law. He accused the majority of his fellow justices of abusing their position to uphold a law they wanted instead of following the Constitution. Meanwhile his views on Obamacare were not personal, but legally based.

And then there are the other opponents of Obamacare that I am starting to understand more now. These opponents fall into two camps, but really just one. The first camp hates the idea of government-run health care for all Americans. They think a private, market-based system would do a better job. For them, government-run anything means high-costs and poor service. Don’t ask this group to explain how this is any different from the market-based system currently in place. They just know that if the entire system were government-run, things would be worse than they already are. No evidence needed.

The second Obamacare opponent camp is similar to the first in that they also champion a private, market-based system. They are not anti-government like the first camp; they are just pro-market when it comes to any good or service with profit potential. Taking a hugely profitable, shareholder-loving sector like health care out of the market would hurt the economy. These are the folks who spend a lot of time claiming health care is not a right. They also claim that greater competition in the health care market is the answer to controlling health care costs and increasing accessibility. But above all else, health care is a service that must be paid for by the individual.

I don’t agree with Scalia or the anti-government, pro-market Obamacare haters; however, I do acknowledge that they have very strong beliefs.

Scalia was known for his love of the written word and languages. Everyone who’s read the Affordable Care Act agrees that it is no friend of the well-written word. I think Scalia took great offense to what he viewed as a third rate law. And I also believe that he thought President Obama got something he did not deserve—a great law, not in substance but in historical significance. He was an intellectual elitist that hated the idea of an unworthy law credited to an unworthy person. In this sense, his objection to the Affordable Care Act was personal.

The anti-government Obamacare opponents proclaim to have such a low opinion of government’s ability to administer a program that anything but government will do. I hate to go there, but this camp’s views on health care are irrational. They are in conscious denial of the abhorrent state of the private health care system that a government-run system would replace. And Obamacare isn’t even government-run health care, but they act like it is…

The pro-market Obamacare opponents are no more rational than the anti-government Obamacare ones. They are also in conscious denial of a broken private sector health care system. Their motive is simply to keep health care profitable for investors and to keep high paying health care jobs. For them, health care is a commodity. They need a big dose of their own medicine. Outsourcing of an over-bloated sector.

Tags: obamacare, Scalia