Are Clarence Thomas And Antonin Scalia BFF'S?

Look who's sitting next to each other!

If Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare didn't take away our individual freedoms, how will the ACA? Will we call the individual mandate a penalty or tax? If you call it a tax, is it constitutional? Like the payroll tax for Social Security?
There are two justices on the supreme court to watch. Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia. They will probably stay with a conservative agenda and vote against the individual mandate. One thing I like to keep in mind is that all Supreme Court justices have health insurance through the government and have for some time and have no idea what it's like to have to deal with private sector benefits and the sky high deductibles that you may be forced to take to keep down your insurance payments.
The United States is ranked 49th in life expectancy. Germany, Sweden, Finland, U.K., France are way ahead of us. This does not seem to enter into the conversation, plenty of people assume we're number 1! Because, isn't the United States always # 1? But we aren't that exceptional when it comes to healthcare.
Justice Ginsberg made some comments about Social Security. I couldn't imagine trying to get a program like Social Security passed today. And Social Security is very popular. When the Social Security program was created, that was constitutional.
She asked if "the only permissible form of subsidizing healthcare was through a taxpayer funded government program." http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/761048
We already have a taxpayer funded government healthcare program, medicare and medicaid. If that was utilized as our single payer option, that would be easy and it's already in place.
This seems to be a collective issue, as medicare and medicaid is a collective solution to the problem of the elderly and indigent having access to healthcare. We need a solution for the uninsured who are falling through the cracks and can't afford healthcare or don't qualify for medicaid. The only part of the ACA that is being questioned is the individual mandate. And that legislation is over a thousand pages long. What I find the most distressing about this is the almost willful ignorance of people complaining that they like their healthcare and don't want to change it. Which the ACA does not do, it's only for the people without healthcare. If these ignorant people are out there voting, that is really scary. They don't bother to educate themselves, or are just too stupid. Ignorance can be remedied with education, but you can't fix stupid.