The Obamacare battle is far from won

The US Supreme Court’s decision to uphold ‘Obamacare’ and the so-called ‘individual mandate’ will have brought a little relief to President Obama. If his administration’s hardest-fought legislative victory had been struck down by the high court, the president’s admirers would have started to wonder whether he had achieved anything at all. But Obama and the Democrats will know that their healthcare battle is far from won. Republicans have pledged to carry on trying to repeal ‘Obamacare’ in its entirety. And there are bound to be all sorts of complicated and tedious state-by-state legal challenges over various technicalities before the most of the law is brought into force in 2014. 

And anyway, the ruling might have dire implications for Obama’s re-election campaign. How will the American public react, given the majority of Americans oppose the ‘individual mandate’ and there’s a presidential election a few months away? Obama’s campaign advisers might come to wish the court had ruled against them.