A tale of two King v. Burwell reactions: Hillary v. Bernie

With articles such as "When Your Health Plan’s Deductible Is So High That You Can’t Afford to See a Doctor" still being published in a post-Affordable Care Act (ACA) era, it should come as no surprise that the American health care non-system remains a nightmare for middle-class and low-income Americans, not to mention the poor and destitute in states that cruelly chose not to expand Medicaid. So, following the SCOTUS ruling to preserve ACA subsidies today, it is instructive to look at the reactions of the two leading candidates for the Democratic nomination: Hillary and Bernie.

Hillary predictably -- and properly -- celebrated the ruling as a win for Americans.

Yes! SCOTUS affirms what we know is true in our hearts & under the law: Health insurance should be affordable & available to all. -H

— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) June 25, 2015

Her campaign also created some sort of petition (i.e. excuse to ask for e-mails and donations) for Americans to sign.

A great day! Add your name if you agree: Affordable health care is a basic human right →http://t.co/...pic.twitter.com/kATncnkfGq

— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) June 25, 2015

The problem with Hillary's response, though, is that in the United States affordable health care is not a basic human right under the law. (She is right, though, that it is a basic human right in American hearts: the majority of Americans now support a single-payer, Medicare-for-all system.)

So, I am forced to wonder: given that Hillary has yet to endorse single-payer -- not even a public option -- how is she actually going to ensure access to health care as a right for all Americans? If a good is declared a basic human right, it follows that there must be a plan for actually fulfilling that right...for all Americans. Her Web site --"The Four Fights" -- says nothing about a plan to ensure all Americans can see a doctor. Maybe she is afraid of offending for-profit hospital chains whose stocks are surging today? Otherwise, I'm not really sure why she wouldn't propose a publicly-financed alternative to America's sadistic private health insurers.

Enter Bernie's reaction to the SCOTUS ruling.

This.

Today, 35 million Americans lack insurance. It would have been an outrage to throw 6.4 million more people off. pic.twitter.com/aIpOzpsuc4

— Bernie Sanders (@BernieSanders) June 25, 2015

And this.

NEWS: Sen. Bernie Sanders' statement on Supreme Court decision upholding #ACAhttp://t.co/...pic.twitter.com/PjyEillVBa

— Bernie Sanders (@SenSanders) June 25, 2015

If you don't have the time -- or the data plan -- to click on the link, here's what he says in detail.

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) issued the following statement on Thursday after the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 in the case of King v. Burwell to uphold the Affordable Care Act:

“The Supreme Court recognized the common-sense reading of the Affordable Care Act that Congress intended to help all eligible Americans obtain health insurance whether they get it through state or national exchanges. Access to affordable health care should not depend on where you live.

“At a time when the United States in the only major country on earth that doesn’t guarantee health care to all Americans– and 35 million of our citizens today still lack insurance – it would have been an outrage to throw 6.4 million more people off health insurance.

“What the United States should do is join every other major nation and recognize that health care is a right of citizenship. A Medicare-for-all, single-payer system would provide better care at less cost for more Americans.”

Ok, so that is a plan. Bernie is recognizing a problem with clear detail -- 35 million Americans still lack insurance coverage -- and proposing a clear solution based on best practice from Canada, Australia and the majority of the European Union countries: a Medicare-for-all single-payer system.

So, again, we have two approaches to governing as a Democratic president. As I have argued before, Hillary and Bernie are two very different candidates with very different visions for America.

One candidate declares that affordable health care is a human right (note that Hillary does not even state that health care itself is a right, but that one should be able to theoretically pay for it if deemed "affordable" by some complex calculation), while the other candidate proposes an actual path towards actualizing the right of health care for every single American citizen.

Choose wisely.