Yesterday, a federal judge in Florida ruled the newly passed health care legislation unconstitutional. Florida, along with 25 other states, including Wisconsin, had filed a lawsuit to stop the reform and the judge agreed, concluding, “Congress exceeded the bounds of its authority in passing the act with the individual mandate.”

The individual mandate is the provision in the law requiring all people to purchase health insurance by 2014, with some exceptions being given to low-income individuals. The idea behind this is that a major cost of health care stems from a free-rider problem, meaning those people without insurance are still seen in this country and those costs are diffused to the rest of us.

So the solution in the health care bill is that everyone be in the insurance pool, allowing all our premiums to go down. While two other judges have rejected the unconstitutional claim, the Florida judge – who was almost apologetic for rejecting a law he referred to as monumental – became the second to say the law exceeded the regulatory powers granted to Congress under the Commerce Clause.

This is an expected response to a bill that seeks to stretch government powers to new degrees, as never before would it be possible for the government to punish an individual for not buying something. But it should not be viewed as the first step toward government-mandated broccoli purchases, but as a possible solution to a growing problem.

This sort of response to the health care bill does not concern me. Instead, it is the vitriolic dogma surrounding the health care debate that seems to drown out reasonable conversation that worries me.

It is one thing to raise concerns that a mandate on health insurance is unconstitutional, and quite another to reject this entire bill under the guise of some socialistic threat.

The reality is that the United States spends more on health care than any other nation, 50 percent more than the second highest spender and about double the average of developed nations. Yet even with this apparent emphasis on health care we lag behind other countries in terms of health outcomes.

According to a CBS news report, many researchers studying our health care system believe that 20 percent of our expenditures do not contribute to better health. The bucket is clearly leaking, so how is it that you end up with a Gallup poll showing Americans opposed to the reform by six points?

How does attempting to fix a system that is forcing an annual increase of almost 10 percent in health care costs on small businesses, the backbone of America, emerge opposed to those Americans?

The conversation is still stuck on to reform or not to reform as we fail to notice the obvious, such as how from 2009-10 the five largest insurance companies dropped 2.7 million people while increasing profits by 56 percent.

Here in Wisconsin, for example, the bill our governor rejected would likely save the state more than $500 million between 2014 and 2019, according to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. This is because the new bill fits in nicely with Wisconsin’s existing program called Badgercare Plus, which provides health insurance to low-income families and has broad eligibility requirements.

Under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), the federal government would now pay a larger share of those costs. Here in Wisconsin, then, we clearly already have a government subsidized health care system, yet there is no outcry against Badgercare, no silly name to shout at people.

What it reveals is the complex nature of health care – the interlocking private and public parts, attempting to ensure everyone has the ability to be seen by a doctor, and seen affordably. It is the gross oversimplification of these issues into blaring talking points that trick a nation into believing it is better off just pouring more water into the leaky bucket that is health care instead of trying to fill in the holes.

There are plenty of other angles through which we can look at health care reform. Even the simple act of extending parents’ insurance to children until the age of 26 is crucial to improving the system as a whole.

Because of it we don’t have thousands of individuals who, upon completing college, are forced to decide between buying groceries or paying for health insurance. Now, someone who changes jobs cannot be denied coverage by the new insurer based on preexisting conditions; it goes on and on, and only gets more technical with each issue.

I have no problem with legally justified questioning of health care reform. I have no problem with reasoned debate about the complex realities of providing someone with insurance against sickness and disease.

What I have a problem with is, at a time when we can recognize that perhaps our most fundamental social system is flawed and persistently requires more money to provide care, the conversation is dominated by scare tactics, misleading information and outright lies.

For or against reform is the wrong conversation; the focus must be on how to reform. Ask the experts. Len Nichols, a professor of health policy at George Mason University, sums things up saying, “There is a lot of ideology in the way you present things, I think it is fair to say, on balance, (it is) highly likely that Wisconsin will be better off. But it’s hard to get people to be balanced at the moment.”

There is your problem: Imbalance has created “Obamacare.” There is no “Obamacare.” There is only an act attempting to protect patients and ensure affordable care. Is that really so bad?

John Waters ([email protected]) is a junior majoring in journalism.