You want the full text of the bill? Just the facts? Here you go.

The bill everyone knows as Obamacare is officially called the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. The Senate passed it on December 24, 2009, the House passed it on March 21, 2010, and President Obama signed it into law on March 23, 2010.

Immediately afterward, Congress used the reconciliation process to pass a bill amending Obamacare. It’s called the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010. President Obama signed it into law on March 30, 2010.

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Here’s the text of the Supreme Court case:

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1/18/12 Update: Want to see what your medical care will be like under Obamacare? Visit a local VA hospital, or read this story of the VA’s neglect of an injured Air Force veteran. Government health care is about as friendly, helpful, innovative, and responsive as what you’ll see in any Bureau of Motor Vehicles office.

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3/23/12 Update: Consider.

Ultimately, the question [confronted by the Supreme Court on Monday] will hinge on whether the Commerce Clause has any limits. If the federal government can compel a private citizen, under threat of a federally imposed penalty, to engage in a private contract with a private entity (to buy health insurance), is there anything the federal government cannot compel the citizen to do?

If Obamacare is upheld, it fundamentally changes the nature of the American social contract. It means the effective end of a government of enumerated powers — i.e., finite, delineated powers beyond which the government may not go, beyond which lies the free realm of the people and their voluntary institutions. The new post-Obamacare dispensation is a central government of unlimited power from which citizen and civil society struggle to carve out and maintain spheres of autonomy.

Figure becomes ground; ground becomes figure. The stakes could not be higher.

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