Josiah Bartlett Center Board Member and health care policy Peter Angerhofer responded to this morning’s U.S. Supreme Court decision in NFIB v. Sebelius, known as the ObamaCare decision, with the following statement.

Polls consistently indicate that a majority of Americans oppose Obamacare, and those same polls show a broad hope that the Supreme Court would rule it unconstitutional. While opponents of the ACA saw the Supreme Court as a convenient way to defang a bad law, the real failures of the law were not about the Commerce Clause or the 10th amendment or the power to tax.

The real problem with ObamaCare is that it does not control costs — does not reduce the cost of providing care. It just rearranges who pays those costs and, in doing so, actually increases overall costs, increasing taxes, defunding Medicare, increasing utilization, and shifting costs onto individuals and states. It is most decidedly not the job of the Supreme Court to determine whether the bill is good or bad, nor should the Supreme Court reflect popular opinion — both those jobs are assigned to our representatives in the Legislative and Executive branches.

Opponents can complain about many aspects of ObamaCare — what it does to individual liberty, the misrepresentations put forth by the President, and the backdoor legislative strategies that got it passed — but at the end of the day, it was passed by both the House and Senate and signed into law by the President. This bill was approved by our duly elected representatives, and it will require our duly elected representatives to repeal it. If a majority of Americans oppose ObamaCare, then a majority of Americans should show up at the polls in November and elect a House of Representatives, a Senate, and a President who will repeal it.

Given its status as a battleground state, New Hampshire voters have a real role to play in deciding who occupies the White House and therefore the likelihood of repeal. In 2010, NH voters rejected 3 candidates for federal office who supported the bad policies in ObamaCare. In 2012, they have a chance to add a fourth to that list.