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Bloggers are zeroing in on health care politics as races around the nation ramp up for midterm elections this fall. Candidates and politicians alike feature prominently this week.

CJR’s Trudy Lieberman visits Missouri to check back with voters she interview a year ago prior to passage of the national health law. Lieberman says, “What I found corroborates anecdotally what the polls are finding scientifically: that people don’t like reform; believe much of the misinformation that they’ve heard; don’t see how it will help them; and have a bad feeling about what will happen to their benefits.”

Health Beat Blog’s Maggie Mahar makes clear her opposition to Rick Scott’s candidacy for Florida governor. Scott is the former CEO of the massive HCA/Columbia hospital chain that pleaded guilty “to no fewer than 14 felonies and paid a total of $1.7 billion in criminal and civil fines. Scott was never charged with any wrong-doing.” Scott won the Republican nomination in Florida’s primary election Tuesday. Mahar writes that voters need to examine his background: “I was thunder-struck when I discovered that Rick Scott was running in the Republican primary to become  governor of Florida. In May, I wrote a HealthBeat post about his candidacy, predicting that he might even win. He did. This is why I have decided to take another crack at the story. It is essential that everyone—whether conservative or liberal—understand who Scott is, and the role he played, not  only in the health care industry.”

The Heritage Foundation has a guest post and video from Republican Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels (considered a potential presidential candidate in 2012), who says of the new health law, “it’s a misnomer to even refer to this as ‘reform.’ It doesn’t reform anything. Instead, it perpetuates and magnifies all the worst aspects of our current system: fee for service reimbursement, ‘free’ to the purchaser consumption, and an irrationally expensive medical liability tort system. It’s a sure recipe for yet more overconsumption and overspending.”

Contrary to Cannon and Daniels, the National Center for Policy Analysis is using the term “health reform” — and just published a nearly 50-page consumer’s guide to the new health law.

Wonk Room’s Igor Volsky looks at news that the health insurer trade group AHIP has donated 8:1 in favor of Republican candidates this year.  Volsky cautions, “this donation imbalance shouldn’t be interpreted as an industry endorsement of the GOP’s repeal efforts or its attack on the individual mandate — which could make the industry millions. The industry is turning to the Republican party not so that it could repeal the entire law — that seems highly unlikely — but so that it can push for favorable regulations that don’t cut into industry profits.”

Meanwhile, Avik Roy tries to explain the divide between consveratives and liberals on the term “death panels” after a recent post sparked some controversy.  Roy explains, “The [British National Health Service] for American conservatives, is the paradigm of how state control of the health care system plays out. [Former Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah] Palin’s logic is irrefutable: once the government is spending the money, the government has an obligation to the taxpayer to use those dollars as efficiently. What does that entail? From the government’s point of view, that involves not wasting money on end-of-life care.”

And Time’s Kate Pickert points to new estimates by the Congressional Budget Office that “repealing the parts of the Affordable Care Act, including changes to Medicare, Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program, would increase the deficit by $455 billion. The CBO released the figure this week in a letter responding to a request from Republican Sen. Mike Crapo.”

And for loyal Blog Watch readers, a sign-off: it’s my last day working at Kaiser Health News, and thus my last roundup.  Thanks for reading along with me as we watched bloggers tackle the complex world of health policy.

An article describing Democrats’ “retreat” from the new health law attracted attention from health policy bloggers. Politico’s Ben Smith reported that Democratic supporters of the health legislation are moving away from arguments that it will reduce health costs and the deficit. A conference call on Thursday featured a power point presentation from the Herndon Alliance, a pro-reform group. One of the bullets on the presentation counseled Dems, “Don’t say the law reduces health costs and [the] deficit.”

Conservative bloggers pounced on the news.

Hot Air’s Allah Pundit thinks this spells bad news for Dems in the mid-term elections: “the fact that they’re now so far in retreat that they’re willing to make rhetorical concessions even on their idiotic core plank about bending the cost curve shows just how worried they are that the GOP (a) will be making big, big gains in November and (b) might just have the public support needed to get a serious pro-repeal movement going among the electorate. This is pure defense.”

Cato’s Michael Cannon says the presentation came just as a new poll showed that the individual mandate to purchase insurance has less than majority support: “Americans still support ObamaCare’s price controls — which force insurance companies to over-charge the healthy and under-charge the sick — by 58-42 percent.  But as President Obama has himself acknowledged, those price controls don’t work without the individual mandate.  Unless a majority also supports the mandate, you don’t have majority support for either.”

Reason’s Peter Suderman writes, “The best case that liberal health care advocates can make here is that they are simply backing off the cost and deficit claims because those arguments aren’t resonating with voters. No matter what, as Smith’s piece notes, this signals a dramatic shift in messaging—one that basically concedes that, in the court of public opinion, critics have won the core economic argument about the law.”

Responding to a statement in the power point that Democratic candidates should focus their message on “improving” the legislation, The Weekly Standard’s Jeffrey Anderson says, “The truth is that Obamacare cannot be improved.  It can only be repealed.  It was passed as “comprehensive legislation,” and it must be repealed comprehensively.”

Meanwhile, Time’s Kate Pickert thinks “[n]one of the material in either Herndon document is earth-shattering. It’s no secret that a lot of voters don’t know what’s in the law or how it will affect them. Everyone knows that seniors are worried about Medicare cuts. That a presentation like this exists is also not noteworthy. (Check out this anti-reform messaging memo from last year.) What’s significant here is that the Democrats’ messaging strategy on health care so far has been basically a waste of time and there’s a sizable effort underway among advocacy groups to salvage that effort, change strategies and possibly win over some more voters between now and the November mid-terms.”

Wonk Room’s Igor Volsky agrees with Pickert that the message change isn’t major, saying, “Smith’s claims of a “dramatic” or secret change in messaging is anachronistic and misleading. They ignore the shifts in message that occurred throughout the reform period and suggest, incorrectly, that Democrats are abandoning previous claims to save a sinking ship, a notion that’s not supported by recent polling data. … The Politico article incorrectly assumes that reform is hanging on for dear life and that Democrats and their allies are making one last ditch effort — a sudden message switch –to resuscitate it. The reality is that Democrats are having trouble convincing certain sectors of the public on the merits of the law and are relying on past messaging efforts to close the sale.”

And Ben Smith, author of the original article, responds, saying, “Igor Volsky at the Center for American Progress, who has followed the health care conversation as closely as anyone, notes that the cost argument has been fading for a while. (He thinks I’ve exaggerated the drama of the shift in this respect, but I think the open abandonment of the cost argument — mentioning it is listed as a “don’t” — is a fairly stunning admission of defeat, not just a rearrangement of talking points. I’m not sure we disagree on the facts.)”

Other commentators continue to mull over changes to health insurance under the overhaul.

Insure Blog’s Bob Vineyard uses a site that shows providers participating in the new high-risk insurance plans.  Vineyard, who lives near Atlanta, Ga., finds: “A quick search on their site turned up 13 general practice doctors who are willing to treat PCIP patients. Interesting that there are 65 psychiatrists willing to treat PCIP patients but only 13 GP’s. If my wife needed an obstetrician she can pick from Dr. Schaefer or Dr. Schaefer (he has 2 offices). Cardiologists? There are 100. Oncologists? You can pick from 26. How about hospitals? Only 4 within 10 miles of my home who are willing to treat PCIP patients and none of them have a labor and delivery room.”

Kavita Patel of the New Health Dialogue makes a flow chart to help readers figure out if their children are eligible to be on their health insurance plan.

And Joe Paduda of Managed Care Matters hosts an implementation-themed Health Wonk Review.

Bloggers examine one of the key issues at the meeting of the National Association of Insurance Commissioners–the question of what expenses insurers will be able to count as medical care, which is important because the new health law sets requirements for such spending. Others discuss repealing the health overhaul and what the FDA’s consideration of an expensive breast cancer drug.

The New Republic’s Jonathan Cohn previews the battle between Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and health insurers over regulations for the new health law: “The architects of the Affordable Care Act … packed the law with regulations designed to force insurers change their behavior. … The good news is that Secretary Kathleen Sebelius has recruited some of the country’s most respected and seasoned regulators to carry out this task. And, so far, they seem determined to get aggressive with the insurance industry.” Cohn explains that the NAIC meeting is seeing a bit of controversy over the definition of the so-called “medical-loss ratio,” or the amount of premium dollars insurers spend on medical care compared to other activities (such as advertising).  Cohn continues, “The Affordable Care Act stipulates that the HHS Secretary consider the [NAIC's] recommendations when writing regulations. But it doesn’t say she has to follow it. If indeed the commissioners come down with a watered-down regulation, it will be interesting to see whether Sebelius goes along.”

Anthony Wright of Health Access adds, “The amount of money riding on the outcome” of the final decision on the MLR regulation “is huge. According to a study released last month by Health Care for America Now!, if the new law had been on the books in 2009, the six largest for-profit health insurance companies would have been required to refund $1.9 billion for that year alone.”

On a similar note, Steve Carroll of The Incidental Economist thinks insurers are looking at how to game the new regulations: “Anytime I hear someone claim that a law or regulation leaves relatively little to chance, I get a little shiver.  Give credit where credit is due.  Insurance companies are very, very good at what they do.  And, while many politicians and activists are still campaigning and crying for a repeal of PPACA, you’re not seeing that from the insurance companies.  They are (probably smartly) much more concerned with doing the best they can under the new landscape. I have no doubt they will succeed.” Carroll points to the way HMOs were able to enroll healthier patients in private Medicare plans.

In other health reform news, blogger and insurance agent Henry Stern explains why he’s charging a $50 retainer fee to anyone who wants help navigating the new high-risk pools: “As this is a ‘non-commissionable’ product, I feel justified in doing so. And what’s so ‘labor intensive’ about it? Well, consider that, in order to ’sell’ one of these, I need to complete and submit a special Broker Verification Form with each ‘application,’ and … this will require some fairly heavy pre-screening on my own part.”

Hot Air’s Ed Morrissey thinks an FDA advisory panel’s recommendation to decertify the Avastin for breast cancer treatment is in part due to health reform: “With the new ObamaCare regime in place, the issue of cost has now become openly part of the FDA process.  This is a perversion of their mission, which is supposed to only involve product safety and effectiveness, not bean-counting.  If Medicare doesn’t want to cover Avastin, that should be a separate issue handled by CMS and HHS.  This strongly suggests that the FDA has become politicized to a degree where their recommendations lose credibility — a dangerous situation for consumers and providers alike.”

Jaan Sidorov of the Disease Management Care Blog says he’s “not going to vote for any candidate spouting silly rhetoric over the ‘repeal of Obamacare.’ The odds of prevailing against a Presidential veto are likewise questionable and the waste of political energy would also be atrocious. The only merit to a repeal debate is that every minute spent on that would be a minute less spent on crafting more ill-considered legislation — from both sides of the aisle. Our Republic deserves better.”

Health Beat’s Maggie Mahar responds to some liberals’ argument that a more progressive health reform plan could be put in place if Republicans succeed in repealing the health law: “I really don’t want to go there. First, I’m convinced that conservatives won’t be able to repeal the Affordable Care Act (ACA).  Democrats will hold onto the Senate, and President Obama still has a veto. If necessary, he will use it to protect the bill. Meanwhile, the majority of the public either favors the legislation or want to ‘wait and see’ how well it works. Most voters would be utterly disgusted if Congress returns to the health care debate this fall. It was ugly the first time around; virtually no one wants to watch re-runs on C-Span.” 

Katherine Hobson of The Wall Street Journal’s Health Blog discusses a new study that examined the demographics of those who remain uninsured in Massachusetts, which was a model for the federal health overhaul. Hobson notes, “Those uninsured adults were more likely than the insured to be male, young and single; to be a member of a racial or ethnic minority, or a non-citizen and to lack proficiency in English or live with adults who also didn’t speak English very well. They also had fewer years of school, higher unemployment rates, lower family income and reported greater financial stress than the insured, the researchers write.”

Bloggers react to Tuesday’s vote in the House of Representatives to provide additional funding to states, including extra Medicaid dollars.  Republican leaders decried the bill because of its cost. But House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., called lawmakers back from their usual August recess to vote on the bill, which President Barack Obama quickly signed.

Time’s Kate Pickert notes that a number of Republican governors had pleaded for the aid but have changed their position and looks back at a letter sent to Congress by 47 governors in February pleading for the funding: “There’s not a better illustration of the priority divide between Republicans in Washington DC and those in the states than the Medicaid funding passed by the House today. … Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels, a Republican who signed the Feb letter, has lately been railing against the extra Medicaid funding. A spokesman for him says that the state has recovered better than others since then and no longer needs the money. That might make sense logically and especially politically, but will Indiana reject the $434 million coming its way thanks to Congress on the grounds that it’s not needed? Nah.”

The Heritage Foundation’s Brian Blase notes: “The bailout is not geared toward high poverty states; it is geared toward states in the most fiscal trouble, largely because of Medicaid profligacy. So New York will receive two-and-a-half times more money from the Medicaid bailout than will Texas. Both bailout extensions will reward states that mismanaged their Medicaid programs. The House should not allow the American taxpayer to be the payer-of-last-resort for mismanaged state programs.”

But The Washington Post’s Ezra Klein thinks it wasn’t enough money for cash-strapped states: “The end product has, after three months of negotiations and compromises, less than half the $50 billion-plus the House originally wanted. Moderate Senate Republicans forced the legislation to be deficit neutral, so the bill shifts money around rather than injecting new money into an economy that needs it. One of the offsets was a $12 billion cut to the food stamp program. And though the bill will help, it will not do enough. … We don’t want states to manage the crisis by worsening it, but that’s exactly what further cuts and tax hikes will do. And though this bill will help, further cuts and tax hikes will be needed.”

In other state news, Wonk Room’s Igor Volsky says 19 states are toiling away on implementation of the new health overhaul: “The success of health care reform will be determined by the states that implement it, and so far [state] officials have done an impressive job of ignoring the repeal calls of state politicians and laying the groundwork for effective implementation. According to the National Governor’s Association (NGA), 19 states have “created some body to work on implementation” — even as 5 of those states (Virginia, Pennsylvania, Nevada, Minnesota, Michigan) are suing the federal government over the constitutionality of reform. (Read the progress they’ve made here).”

Elsewhere, three bloggers are still talking about the new health law and Medicare, especially a controversial report on Medicare’s future issued last week by the administration.

On The Health Care Blog, John Goodman says, “I have been watching the release of the Medicare Trustees reports for many years and I have never seen anything as strange as what happened last week. … So now you know why it took until August to release a report that normally appears in April. No, it wasn’t because health reform is so complicated that it took many months to figure out how it would affect Medicare. It was because an internally divided Obama administration feared the potential embarrassment of being repudiated by its own accountants!”

The New Atlantis’ James Capretta looks at dissent to the Trustee report. Richard Foster, head actuary of the federal Medicare agency, filed an alternate report: “As Foster notes, the Medicare cuts upon which the president’s claims of additional Medicare solvency rest are so absurdly unrealistic that they can hardly be taken seriously at all. Despite all of the talk of painless ‘delivery-system reform’ in Medicare, the big cuts come, as usual, from arbitrary and deep across-the-board payment-rate reductions for hospitals and other institutional providers of care.”

But The New Republic’s Jonathan Cohn thinks some Republicans are being disingenuous when discussing Medicare’s future and the health overhaul: “[H]ealth care reform does reduce overall spending on Medicare. That includes reduced payments to providers, who could react by seeing fewer Medicare patients, and to private Medicare Advantage plans, which might offer fewer benefits. But for as long as I can remember, Republicans have also called for spending less on Medicare. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich did it in the 1990s.”

Bloggers are still buzzing about last week’s report on the future of Medicare, which found that the new health overhaul law would extend the life of the trust fund by 12 years, to 2029.

Wonk Room’s Igor Volsky explains, “A new Medicare Trustees report finds that the Independent Payment Advisory Board [IPAB], the payment reform demonstration projects, and productivity improvements in the new health care law will save Medicare $8 billion by the end of 2011, and $575 billion over the next decade.” Volsky also explains that even under CMS’ Chief Actuary Richard Foster’s differing estimates, the life of the Medicare trust fund is extended one year shorter to 2028.

Cato’s Michael Cannon uses conditional logic to point out the assumed cost savings may not come about: “Medicare’s chief actuary and many others doubt that providers will realize the productivity gains assumed by Congress.  If the assumed productivity gains do not occur, those price reductions would reduce Medicare enrollees’ access to care.  Medicare providers and enrollees would likely persuade Congress to block the price reductions.  Medicare spending and the federal debt would rise.” Cannon and John Sheils of the Lewin Group weigh in.

On the National Journal’s Expert Blog, Meghan McCarthy asks health policy experts whether they think the predicted productivity changes will take place.

Heritage’s Kathryn Nix discusses other changes to Medicare under the health overhaul: as part of her “Side Effects of ObamaCare” series, Nix writes, “Too bad for the oldsters.  Even before Obamacare, Medicare had racked up unfunded obligations of $38 trillion.  But rather than restructure Medicare to remedy the program’s fundamental fiscal problems, Obamacare proponents opted to siphon off $200 billion and use it to start an entirely new—and equally financially unsustainable—health program for even more people.”

The New Republic’s Jonathan Chait responds to Nix: “The Republican Party’s most successful political move over the last year and a half has been to convince old people that health care reform has come at their expense. …Conservatives used to frequently taunt liberals for defending a welfare state that primarily benefited the old and shorted the young. This was always a caricature. But now, out of Republican electoral expedience, conservatives are adopting a view even more extreme than the caricature.”

While the online debate continued, President Barack Obama used his weekly address to discuss the changes to Medicare under health reform.

Beyond the Medicare rhetoric, the American Spectator’s Philip Klein looks at what might be Republican’s strategy should they regain the House of Representatives: “they could theoretically use their new power of the purse to deny Obama the funding needed to administer his signature accomplishment. This prospect is already gaining steam among opponents of the law. The new group DeFundit.org has gotten more than 90 candidates and current members of Congress to sign a pledge supporting stripping ObamaCare of money.”

Bloggers try to parse the result of a Missouri ballot initiative that state voters overwhelmingly approved Tuesday. The initiative, which challenges the federal health overhaul’s individual insurance mandate,  was the first of its kind to go up for a vote in the states, and more are expected this fall.

Time’s Kate Pickert notes, “The measure, which says Missouri residents can’t be required to maintain health insurance, is largely symbolic since federal law trumps state law. There was almost no organized opposition to the measure and the various races in the state likely drew out more Republican voters. (The primaries are not closed – voters choose which party ballot to use at the polling sites – but about 600,000 Missourians cast ballots in the Republican Senate primary compared to about 300,000 in the Democratic Senate primary.)” Still, she concludes, the strong support the initiative garnered “says much about the strength of opposition to the new Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.”

The Heritage Foundation’s Rob Bluey calls the vote “a significant setback” for the health overhaul law.

Michael Tanner writes on Critical Condition that the vote is “even worse for [Democrats] than it looks.” Tanner argues: “even if you assume that every single Republican voted for the initiative and every person who didn’t vote in a primary voted for it, at least 40,000 Democrats — more than one in every eight Democratic primary voters — voted against the centerpiece of President Obama’s health-care plan. And these aren’t just any registered Democrats; these are the party activists, the Democratic base. Do we need any more evidence of how unpopular this bill is?”

Hot Air’s Ed Morrissey make a similar point: “Bear in mind that over 315,000 Democrats turned out to cast ballots in the primary that nominated Robin Carnahan, while over 577,000 Republicans hit the polls.  That is about a 65/35 split — which means that a significant amount of Democrats either supported the ballot measure repudiating ObamaCare, or didn’t bother to cast a vote to defend the program.  Actually, Prop C got more votes than the combined voting in both Senate primaries — which tells us something even more about the passion in the electorate. Democrats may have to hit the panic button after seeing the results from this swing state.  ObamaCare set fire to the electorate last year, and that may be an inferno for Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid in November.”

Insure Blog’s Bob Vineyard acknowledges the vote’s symbolic nature, but asks, “Question is, are politicians listening or are they simply following their own personal agenda?”

But Health Beat’s Maggie Mahar is non-plussed. Mahar says the vote only proved “That Republicans don’t like health reform. … Because the Republican primary was hotly contested, GOP voters came out in force. So now we know what have known for months: Republicans are opposed to health care reform.  Many just don’t see universal coverage as a top priority, some are worried that it will cost too much, and others just want to ‘break Obama.’”

The Washington Post’s Ezra Klein expresses similar sentiments.  He writes, “I’m really not sure why conservatives are so excited that an electorate primarily made of Republican primary voters passed an anti-individual mandate ballot initiative in Missouri. I don’t even understand why conservatives would be excited if it passed during a normal election.” In making his case, Klein points to the law’s symbolic nature and the fact that it focused on the individual mandate as opposed to other aspects of the bill as his reasons for not understanding the GOP take on the news.

Wonk Room’s Igor Volsky doesn’t think Republicans will have much success with this strategy either: “Thus far, the success of this strategy has been limited to Missouri. Arizona — which has put an anti-mandate initiative on the ballot in November — may soon pass a nullification measure, but these states are the exception rather than the rule. In fact, nullification bills have been rejected or failed to pass in at least 26 states where conservatives ‘claimed legislators would defy federal law.’”

And don’t miss the latest Health Wonk Review, a biweekly roundup of health policy blogging, hosted by Jaan Sidorov of the Disease Management Care Blog.

A federal judge’s ruling on Tuesday that Virginia’s lawsuit against the new health overhaul law may proceed sparked commentary from several health care bloggers.

NPR’s Julie Rovner writes: “Justice Department lawyers probably smelled trouble when they read Hudson’s first sentence, which called Virginia’s case ‘a narrowly-tailored facial challenged to the constitutionality’ of the health law.”

Ashby Jones of the Wall Street Journal’s Law Blog says: “The ruling represents a setback that will force the Obama administration to mount a lengthy legal defense of the law. The suit, filed by Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli … , alleges that the law’s requirement that its residents have health insurance violates the Commerce Clause of the Constitution.”

Cato’s Ilya Shapiro declares, “Liberty wins first skirmish in the Obamacare legal battle.”

The American Spectator’s Philip Klein predicts that the “ruling is merely the first stage of the process, which will now enable courts to consider the underlying constitutional questions involved.”

The Heritage Foundation’s Todd Gaziano says, “On the merits, we are surprised the judge took as much space to conclude that Virginia stated a valid cause of action, namely, that Congress had exceeded its constitutional authority with the individual mandate.  At this stage in the litigation and on the particular motion that was filed … the judge need not and could not rule on who will win or even if one side is more likely to win.  The only question is whether Virginia stated a legal cause of action (or legal theory) that is cognizable in law.  Virginia certainly has at least a valid substantive theory to challenge the law, because someone with standing is always able to challenge the constitutionality of a statute on the ground that Congress has no constitutional authority to enact it, QED.”

The Corner’s Daniel Foster says the ruling confirms his belief that “Obamacare, and especially the individual mandate, have expanded the reach of federal authority to new and unprecedented heights. But as [Ashby] Jones makes clear, this win, while crucial, is just the first of many that will be required to overturn the mandate, and Obamacare.”

The Apothecary’s Avik Roy cautions, “even if the individual mandate is overturned, it is likely that the courts will rule to preserve the remainder of PPACA. This is strongly implied by the Supreme Court’s June ruling on the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, in which one provision of the law was struck down, while the rest was preserved. Still, it is encouraging to see that some jurists still believe that there remain limits on the power of the federal government.”

Hot Air’s Ed Morrissey predicts: “Expect the Left to go after Judge Hudson.  George W. Bush appointed him to the federal bench in 2002, following a career in the state bench and also in the US Marshal Service as director during Bush 41’s administration.  The Right showed no reluctance to point out Susan Bolton’s appointment by Bill Clinton, and turnabout is not just fair play but de rigueur by now.”

But so far that’s not happened. Wonk Room’s Igor Volsky ignores the judge’s appointment and instead goes after the Republican legal strategy: “Remember, [Virginia Attorney General Ken] Cuccinelli is claiming that the health care law violates a state measure prohibiting the government from requiring individuals to purchase a health care product. But the injury is self-imposed. Virginia purposely passed a law that contradicted the federal bill, knowing full well that the supremacy clause would invalidate the state law. Now having manufactured the tension out of thin air, the state has a basis, at least according to this judge, to take the federal government to court and engage in the kind of frivolous litigation that Republicans so often deplore. [Republicans] can run around in the days before November 2 claiming that a judge has ruled that there is merit in their challenge and promise to finish off the law if you only vote for them. Republicans are using the courts for purely political ends.”

The American Prospect’s Monica Potts thinks the lawsuits are a losing strategy: “Moreover, it doesn’t seem as though it’s a political winner for states to continue to pursue. Polls show that Bill McCollum, the Florida attorney general who is leading a multi-state lawsuit, might be hurt in his race for governor, and it’s clear more Americans are liking the legislation. While conservative sites are trumpeting today’s news as a big winner, it’s surely likely to remain a big loser.”

And the Obama administration responded as well — Stephanie Cutter writes on WhiteHouse.gov: “Having failed in the legislative arena, opponents of reform are now turning to the courts in an attempt to overturn the work of the democratically elected branches of government.  This is nothing new.   We saw this with the Social Security Act, the Civil Rights Act, and the Voting Rights Act – constitutional challenges were brought to all three of these monumental pieces of legislation, and all of those challenges failed.   So too will the challenge to health reform.”