By Jacob Molyneux, senior editor/blog editor

So today the U.S. Supreme Court did something a little surprising in upholding the individual mandate provision in the Affordable Care Act (here’s the text of the full decision). It was the right thing to do, given judicial precedent, but it still comes as a surprise that Chief Justice Roberts was the swing vote rather than Kennedy, or that they actually did this. Justice Roberts must have looked to his conscience and seen how history would judge him. Or it’s nice to think so.

This is good for many reasons: those under 26 on their parents’ plans can now stay there. A bunch of money earmarked for nurse education will not suddenly disappear. Health care exchanges holding insurance companies to minimum standards will be implemented. Accountable care organizations can continue to experiment in an effort to replace the disastrously expensive fee-for-service model with one tied more closely to outcomes. And a great deal more.

But now we should ask ourselves: Do we go forward or back? This is the real question when it comes to the American health care system. Going back isn’t an option, though many are sure to go on pretending it is (the Republicans will make repealing the Affordable Care Act a centerpiece of their campaign promises, no doubt, a rallying cry against the Democrats). Ignoring reality is something humans are very good at, though it doesn’t always end well, if history is a guide.

And in truth it will take an increasingly powerful act of will to ignore the medical bankruptcies, medical tourism for affordable care to Mexico and further afield, the emergency rooms crowded with the uninsured seeking care for minor and major ailments, the yearly statistics that tell us our health care system is the most expensive per capita and yet has outcomes worse than those of many far poorer countries.

Still, some will surely rise to the occasion as they intone mantras about the free market’s ability to solve all problems for the good of all. Meanwhile the one percent who own an increasingly large percentage of the nation’s wealth will simply avert their eyes, able to afford the best surgeons, concierge care, home visits, brand name drugs.

This matters to me for personal (among other) reasons. At age 27 I left my job working with abused and neglected children and their caregivers and went to graduate school in North Carolina. Living on a tight budget, I opted out of the university’s health care coverage. That is, I chose not to purchase health care . . . it wasn’t mandated, and I didn’t need it.

That fall, as I immersed myself in following my creative dream, I found myself losing touch with reality. My clothes hung off me, I had a thirst that drove me nearly insane (at one point I sat in a bathtub all afternoon sucking on ice cubes just to stop myself from buying and guzzling random selections of liquids at the store—Yoo-hoo, of all things, and orange juice, and Guinness, seltzer, Coke, milk, chocolate milk, etc., etc.). I felt disoriented. One day I saw double as I drove my used pickup truck along the lush parkway. When I went out for a run I found myself barely able to complete a mile, let alone my usual five or six.

As must be clear by now, my immune system had decided to attack my own body, wiping out the insulin-producing cells in my body. It was nothing I did, nothing I could have averted. I was strong, young, healthy, fit. And now, after some blood tests, I learned I had type 1 diabetes and would need to be my own nurse for the rest of my life, checking my blood glucose level many times a day, injecting myself before meals and when the blood glucose level was too high. From then on in I’d need to be attentive to every permutation of exercise, diet, medication as I tried to achieve the “tight” glucose control that would keep me from losing limbs, sight, nerve endings, organs, and eventually my life.

But at the time, in the midst of the initial confusion and struggles, I had a very simple problem on top of all the others: how do I afford this meter to test my blood glucose level, the strips that cost almost a dollar each, the syringes, the two types of insulin, an endocrinologist to monitor the condition? I borrowed some money from an older relative and scraped by. I was lucky enough to have that option. I applied for free medications from a state program. Until I got on my feet a bit more, I spent a lot of time being anxious, broke, and a little scared, skimping on test strips when it was dangerous to do so, regretful that I had decided to go back to graduate school for something unlikely to make me wealthy.

Later still, working as an adjunct university lecturer and a freelance editor, I found what it’s like to be denied access to affordable coverage on the open market. That was upsetting, and it’s one of the things the ACA intends to remedy. Now I’m lucky to get insurance through my job, but the medications are still expensive. I now have two other autoimmune conditions that require medications and specialists. I’m fine, overall, high functioning, but much of my “extra” money is used for medications, tests, physician visits. Without being part of a group plan at work, I’d never be able to afford insurance and all of the medications I need. A full-time job at a large company is a requirement.

So I know why health care reform matters, even if the ACA doesn’t go nearly far enough to control costs, even if it still cedes too much power to the marketplace, to drug companies and insurance companies. Maybe in the end the system will still collapse and it will become clear we need a single-payer system like they have in many countries.

The fact is, health care is nonnegotiable for all of us in the end. You may not have a chronic condition starting in your teens or 20s, but you’re sure to get sick someday. You may not ever get cancer or heart disease, though there’s a pretty good chance you might. You may never break a thumb or a leg, develop a painful skin condition, have a baby, get strep throat.

Those who have been so busy protecting your “freedom” not to have to buy insurance seem unable to see the problems we are facing with our health care system, problems that the necessarily complex Affordable Care Act attempted to address.

Consider a health insurance industry that has been largely unregulated, able to increase premiums massively each year, present their rules in riddles even a PhD won’t help you solve, deny coverage to whoever they want and drop whoever they want from coverage. Not to mention a growing segment of the population (nearly 50 million) without any insurance at all, the costs of health care in an impossible upward spiral . . .

Let’s not keep trying to go back. That door is closed. There’s work to do.

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