Nick Bagley became an expert on health care in a sort of backwards way.

He studies administrative law, regulation, how the government works.

And so I thought, well, gosh, maybe the affordable care would be an interesting statute to learn about.

Maybe health care is a fruitful domain for people who do my kind of law, there didn't seem to be a lot of people doing it.

He thought Obamacare would be a temporary academic diversion.

I didn't realize, and I think very few people realized when the Affordable Care Act was adopted,

just how contentious it would continue being.

I think there was an

assumption on both the left and the right that once it was fully implemented and the benefits

started to flow, that it'd be very hard to dislodge and that frankly the political system would

kind of move on to other battles. And so far, at least, that hasn't seemed to happen.

It may still happen, but if so, I don't know when.

The battle over health care continued this week.

This time, the Affordable Care Act was being hashed out in a Louisiana courtroom.

Long story short, Obamacare seems like it's about to have another near-death experience.

Existential threats to health care have become so routine that it's easy to stop paying attention to them,

what they mean, who they might impact.

But Nick thinks about that all the time.

Yeah, I mean, it was notable in oral argument, just how little attention was paid to the practical effect of a judgment in validating the Affordable Care Act.

There was no discussion of how many people would lose coverage.

There was no trace of any concern for the people who've grown to depend on the insurance

that the affordable care makes available.

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