The liberals had gotten national healthcare five years ago on an overridden a presidential veto. But now it was a scourge for them. Several recent studies showed that AIDS was draining the financial medical resources of the nation and at some places even straining the available physical medical resources primarily facility space and health care workers. The conservatives had long targeted the gay and bi-sexual communities as the cause of this scourge and now that they were in the driver’s seat in response to these studies they drafted legislation to, as they put it, “remove this heavy burden of medical care for the irresponsible from the taxpayer.” Several pieces of proposed legislation actually specified the medical treatment that would and would not be covered for a person who was HIV positive. Some procedures, mainly life extending ones would not be made available. Some prohibited procedures had nothing to do with the disease. Certain orthopedic procedures and most prosthetic appliances would be denied for AIDS patients because they were not expected to live long enough to be beneficial or provide a significant payback. And any treatments beyond that to make life more tolerable were put on a priority list, if someone with AIDS needed treatment and someone not infected needed the same resource, the resource went to the one not infected. The healthcare bill had a provisioning for rationing and it was being used to punish liberals.  AIDS patients would be kept comfortable but if this legislation succeeded the government and the taxpayer would no longer foot the bill for extending their lives or improving their quality of life. It was mean spirited legislation.

In years before this legislation might have been called unconstitutional but three Supreme Court Justices resigned during the preceding four years and the two oldest liberal justices on the court died while hoping for a better climate to be replaced by a liberal. There were jokes about a justice dying with his robe on.  Later it wasn’t so funny.  One almost literally died on the bench during a hearing. He collapsed and was carried out. He was dead before they got him to the hospital. The count of the losses on the bench: three liberals, one moderate and one conservative. All five replacements were very staunch conservatives and all very young for justices. The oldest was just over fifty. The court was now stacked with six conservatives, one liberal and two moderates who in more moderate times might have even been called conservatives. A poll of the justices with the proposed legislation indicated the current bill would pass the constitutionality test if challenged by a 6-3 or 7-2 vote depending on its exact wording.

• The First Family: Chapter 1 – Introduction
• The First Family – Chapter Seven: Kathy Meets a Guy
• The First Family – Chapter Nine: The Conservatives Get the Upper Hand