You’re absolutely right. Universal healthcare is a decisive issue and an important one on the minds of voters going into this election. However, it has been a decisive issue for some time. Hilary Clinton, for example, has been an advocate for an American universal healthcare plan for over 20 years, and in fact has proposed similar bills to Congress in the past.
I don’t think that you’re wrong in proposing the idea that the presentation of the bill to the Supreme Court is conveniently timed to draw attention to it, but you have to realize that people were calling it unconstitutional from day one. The American political system takes time. Even if this is a political maneuver by the Right to make voters more aware of the downfalls of Obama’s healthcare plan, I’m sure that they would have liked it to go to the Supreme Court sooner.
As far as if it’s not broken, don’t fix it, this issue isn’t as simple as that. Is it true that the bill has provided coverage for young people that would have otherwise been uninsured? Yes. However, the flip side of the coin is that requiring insurance companies to cover young people – who are the most reckless and injury prone demographic- drives up insurance premiums. Some people rightly argue that an individual mandate only serves to drive up costs. Prices for anything are a function of the market, and people can charge whatever they want to for whatever that have to sell. Then, you’re back where you started. It doesn’t matter if there’s an individual mandate or not if you don’t have the money to pay for it.
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