During a speech at the Center for American Progress Action Fund this morning, Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-NY) predicted that the current make-up of the Supreme Court makes it more likely than not that the individual health insurance mandate will be found unconstitutional and said that such a ruling could build support for bringing back the public health insurance option:

WEINER: If they strike down the mandate, big deal. Big deal! … We pretty much see the direction the Supreme Court is going, although I think that it would be folly to strike it down, I believe this is clearly under the province of the commerce clause, it’s a relatively small number of people. And by the way, the solution if the mandate is struck down is not that the bill falls like a house of cards…the solution is going to be offering something that everyone agrees is constitutional and that’s the public option in the exchange.

Watch it:

As Austin Frakt put it, the mandate may be the price for maintaining a “private” solution to the health care crisis and the health insurers — the biggest opponents of the public –know it. As Mike Tuffin, executive VP of America’s Health Insurance Plans (the insurance lobby) pointed out in July of 2010, “Health care reform is not over. This is the only the end of the beginning,” Mr. Tuffin said. “Whether we like it or not, the bill was passed. Now we must be reliable and effective implementation partners. We need to stay engaged. The single-payer and public-option supporters have not given up,” he warned.

Also, if one were to review the arc of GOP criticisms against the law, the opposition to the individual mandate — at least from Congressional Republicans — did not develop until after the public option had been effectively taken off the table. Recall that while Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT) and former Senators Judd Gregg (R-NH) and Bob Bennett (R-UT) all previously supported the requirement, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) — who played a key role in the bipartisan negotiations within the so-called gang of six — favored the requirement as late as August 2009. Before that time, the crux of the opposition focused on the public option. As it stood on its last leg in the fall of 2009, Republicans developed a new allergy to requiring people to take responsibility for their eventual health care costs. So, the GOP may have created this conundrum and now they’re making the most of it.

Likely Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney (R-MA) wasted no time denouncing the Affordable Care Act today, the one year anniversary of its signing. The former Massachusetts governor — who signed and still supports a state-based plan that requires individuals to purchase coverage — wrote in the National Review this morning that if elected president, he would work to do-away with the entire law:

“If I were president, on Day One I would issue an executive order paving the way for Obamacare waivers to all 50 states. The executive order would direct the Secretary of Health and Human Services and all relevant federal officials to return the maximum possible authority to the states to innovate and design health-care solutions that work best for them.”

Romney’s proposed action is bold, but it’s also impractical. The executive branch and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) don’t have the authority to grant such broad waivers. According to the law, HHS (together with the IRS) have waiver authority, but only if the states meet very specific requirements. Neither have blanket waiver authority, which would have to come from Congress.

The law does offer states a great deal of flexibility, however, allowing governors to implement the health insurance exchanges themselves or letting “the federal government to do so.” “States may establish their own risk adjustment programs, preexisting condition high risk pools, and excessive premium increase review programs” and receive block grants to construct a “basic health program” that would serve a segment of the Medicaid-eligible population. States can also enter into interstate compacts for the sale of health insurance across state lines and by 2017, the federal government may grant waivers for key provisions and provide states with block grants to develop “their own innovative proposals for reforming health care” (so long as the state provides comprehensive and cost-effective coverage).

Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) has an op-ed in today’s Wall Street Journal suggesting that his daughter Carey may have died from a heart condition were she treated under the Affordable Care Act. The piece reads like a hit piece from the summer of 2009, when Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) was suggesting that the Affordable Care Act would pull the plug on grandma and Reps. Steve King (R-IA), Louie Gohmert (R-TX) and Virginia Foxx (R-NC) were arguing that reform would literally kill Americans.

A year out, these kinds of arguments sound absurd, and so Johnson is now touting what TPM’s Brian Beutler calls a “retroactive twist on the ‘death panels’ hoax.” From Johnson’s op-ed:

I don’t even want to think what might have happened if she had been born at a time and place where government defined the limits for most insurance policies and set precedents on what would be covered. Would the life-saving procedures that saved her have been deemed cost-effective by policy makers deciding where to spend increasingly scarce tax dollars? [...]

Take cancer as one example. Compared to the U.S., breast cancer mortality is 9% higher in Canada (according to the government statistics of each country), 52% higher in Germany and 88% higher in the United Kingdom (according to studies published in Lancet Oncology). Prostate cancer mortality is 604% higher in Britain. [...]

The plain truth is that the American system is better at rewarding innovation and responding to consumer needs. But the history of government-led care is there for all to see. Are we doomed to repeat it?

Beutler correctly points out that the ‘government will death panel Americans’ meme has by now been thoroughly debunked — the “limits for most insurance companies” that Johnson is referring to are actually coverage minimums that states can expand upon — and notes that Carey or a child in her position could have benefited from the law’s new regulations that already prohibit insurers from discriminating against children with pre-existing conditions and eliminated lifetime and annual caps that often leave families with thousands in medical bills. Had her parents not received employer-based coverage, she could have found insurance in the temporary high-risk insurance pools that 12,400 Americans are now enrolled in and in 2014, her parents could buy a comprehensive family plan through a state-based exchange.

Johnson’s indictment of universal health systems around the world is equally pernicious. The United States does boast some of the best acute care in the world, but as Jonathan Cohn points out, “it’s hard to read the data as indictment of universal health care when the U.S. survival rate on other ailments isn’t so superior.” For example, “The Swedes are more likely than Americans to survive a diagnosis of cervical, ovarian, or skin cancer; the French are more likely to survive stomach cancer, Hodgkins disease, and non-Hodgkins lymphoma. Aussies, Brits, and Canadians do better on liver and kidney transplants.”

Countries with universal care also have better quality, access, efficiency, equity, and live healthier lives. And while health spending in the United States increased at more than twice the rate of countries like Canada, Australia, Italy, U.K., Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Sweden, Switzerland, Netherlands, and Japan, America 50th out of 223 nations in life expectancy, with an average life span of 78.37 years, according to estimates from the CIA World Factbook. The United States is also “ranked 29th in the world in infant mortality, tied with Poland and Slovakia.” And so, Johnson gets it wrong. The ACA wouldn’t have killed Johnson’s daughter, but thousands of other uninsured babies would have died without it.

Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN)

Today is the one-year anniversary of President Barack Obama signing the Affordable Care Act or health care reform into law, which, once fully implemented will cover 32 million Americans and begin to lower the rate of growth in health care spending. In the year since reform passed, however, Republicans in the House repealed the law (only to see the measure fall in the Senate) and are now attempting to defund reform. During the nearly 10-month legislative battle that preceded passage, the GOP characterized the bill as a “socialist” “government takeover” and warned Americans that the bill would destroy lives and American society, hurling apocalyptic warnings that seem downright satirical a year later. Below are some of their most outrageous claims:

- REP. JOHN BOEHNER (R-OH): Passage of health reform is “Armageddon” because the law will “ruin our country.” [3/20/2010]

- FRMR. SEN. RICK SANTORUM (R-PA): Health reform “will destroy the country” because, “in the next year or so,” America will have to “dramatically cut the military because we can’t pay for it.” [10/23/2010]

- SEN. TOM COBURN (R-OK): “There will be no insurance industry left in three years.” [10/12/2010]

- REP. MICHELE BACHMANN (R-MN): “On page 16, you can read for yourself that no new health insurance policies can be written once this federal plan comes into effect.” [7/17/2009]

- GLENN BECK: “This is the end of prosperity in America forever … the end of America as you know it.” [11/19/2009]

- SEAN HANNITY: “If we get nationalized health care, it’s over; this is socialism.” [11/2/2009]

- REP. PAUL BROUN (R-GA): “That’s exactly what’s going on in Canada and Great Britain today…and a lot of people are going to die.” [7/10/09]

- REP. LOUIE GOHMERT (R-TX): “I would hate to think that among five women, one of ‘em is gonna die because we go to socialized care.” [7/15/09]

- REP. VIRGINIA FOXX (R-NC): “The Republican plan will] make sure we bring down the cost of health care for all Americans and that ensures affordable access for all Americans and is pro-life because it will not put seniors in a position of being put to death by their government.” [7/28/09]

- SEN. TOM COBURN (R-OK): “I have a message for you: you’re going to die soon…When you restrict the ability of the primary care givers int his country to do what is best for their senior patients, what you are doing is limiting their life expectancy.” [12/1/09]

- REP. MICHELE BACHMANN (R-MN): “Socialized medicine is the crown jewel of socialism. This will change our country forever.” [11/3/2009]