Appellate court rulings have been very inconsistent regarding the health care law, and especially this particular (and crucial) provision mandating participation.

Without the mandate, health care reform short of a fully realized and socialized health care system can not succeed. Any notion of the assurance of universal decent (not perfect, and not plush) health care has to include the notion of shared cost and shared risk across society. I don't much care whether that shared cost and risk is in the form of increased taxes, a mandate to purchase some measure of medical insurance, or some combination of the two.

This latest action is the latest maneuver on the part of people on both sides (really should say "all sides") of the issue to follow the steps and procedures necessary to bring one or more of these cases to the Supreme Court.

There are no easy answers. Health care is expensive for a lot of reasons and more than half of those reasons have nothing to do with greed or expectation of unreasonable profit. I have yet to see any proposal that truly addresses reduction or containment of costs - only cost-shifting. I work in the healthcare industry. I have thought, and will continue to think long and hard about how to actually reduce the cost of providing care instead of shifting the cost of providing care. So far, I have no solutions.

The only firm conclusion I have reached is that the population of the world has already exceeded the carrying capacity of the world in many respects, including in terms of health care. As individuals, each of us have to make choices about individual or familial vs. societal wants and needs.

For some of us, those choices thoughtfully are hard. For some us those choices thoughtfully easy. Some of us don't think at all. We simply jerk our knees according to instinct or command or unexamined paradigm.