ObamaCare Is No Longer A Law

The Law: Already bruised and unpopular, ObamaCare has now been issued a death sentence. Yet the White House says it will "proceed apace" with its implementation. Has anyone there heard of checks and balances?

It's worth noting that Monday's ruling by U.S. District Court Judge Roger Vinson that the Democrats' health care overhaul is unconstitutional is only the latest setback for the badly flawed legislation inflicted on the nation last March.

The measure was already invalidated by the courts once before, the House has overwhelmingly passed a bill to repeal it, insurance companies are bailing out of markets left and right because of its profit-killing mandates and the government has issued Obama-Care waivers by the hundreds.

And now 47 lawmakers have signed on as co-sponsors of a repeal bill in the Senate.

Despite all this, and with no sense of irony, the White House contends Vinson "overreached" in his decision, vows that the revamping of the world's best health care system will continue and warns states against using the ruling to delay its implementation.

What is it about "unconstitutional" that this administration doesn't understand?

True, Vinson didn't grant an injunction against ObamaCare in his 78-page ruling. But that's because he clearly considers his judgment to be an injunction in itself. He expects the executive branch to comply with the law as he has ruled. "There is no reason to conclude that this presumption should not apply here," he wrote.

As one of the lawyers for the 26 states that sued to block Obama-Care put it: "The statute is dead."

That means current regulations, such as forcing insurance companies to treat 26-year-olds as children and provide free preventive care for policyholders, cannot be enforced, and new regulations should not be written.

It means that all bureaucratic work on the legislation must be stopped, that funding for programs — from the National Health Services Corps to student loans — be put on hold and that every working group or panel created by the statute be disbanded.

It means that the White House and the Senate, where the Democrats still have a majority and plan to challenge Vinson's ruling with a hearing on the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act's constitutionality, must act as if ObamaCare does not exist. Anything that it authorized or required must be set aside.

The White House plans to appeal Vinson's ruling. But until it asks for a stay and a court grants one, the government should cease and desist from implementing ObamaCare if it's to stay within the bounds of the law. Don't be surprised, though, if it doesn't.

Democrats still control the White House and Senate, which means they control the levers of the bureaucracy. And they are the party that believes the Constitution means whatever they say it means. A little thing like a federal judge's decision means nothing.

The government's separation of powers across three branches of authority has served this country well for more than 200 years. It was the framers' intent that each branch would be held in check by the others, that none could ever arrogate to itself the absolute power to rule.

Those sharp lines have been blurred, however, by this White House in the same way the political left has for decades obscured the plain language of the Constitution.

What, then, will this administration do if the Supreme Court eventually gets the case and upholds the Vinson decision? Let's hope that legislative repeal takes care of the problem before it ever gets that far.