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A US District court judge on Monday ruled that a key provision in the federal health care reform bill passed earlier this year, is unconstitutional. The individual mandate that requires all Americans have some form of private health insurance was struck down by Judge Henry Hudson in a lawsuit in Virginia. The ruling was the first successful legal challenge to President Obama’s landmark healthcare bill. However, Judge Hudson stopped short of issuing an injunction to stop the law from being implemented. The case will likely be appealed to the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals and may even end up at the Supreme Court. While conservatives and Republicans are celebrating the ruling as a victory against what they call Obamacare, it should be noted that the individual mandate was once strongly supported by Republicans, and health insurance companies heavily lobbied for it. Requiring everyone to buy their insurance policies is a financial bonanza beyond their wildest dreams. Based on that, the California-based group Consumer Watchdog said that the “White House and progressives” should be cheering the Virginian ruling.” Seventy percent of Americans oppose the mandatory purchasing of health insurance. Writing in The Progressive this week, Matthew Rothschild says that the Virginia ruling affirms a Medicare-for-all or Single payer design for a health care system. In fact here in California, the state legislature has passed state-wide single payer bills a few times, only to be vetoed by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. However, the state of Vermont may end up becoming the first one to pass a single payer system. Vermont’s legislature has hired a Harvard economist who designed Taiwan’s single payer health system, to prepare a report on how such a system could be implemented in their state. The report is due next year.

Meanwhile several private insurance companies are announcing this month of rate increases for 2011 – a move they can get away with because there are no federal caps on premiums in the healthcare bill. Despite the few progressive aspects of President Obama’s healthcare reform bill, insurance companies essentially designed it to their liking through a combination of slick PR moves outwardly supporting reform, and behind-the scenes support of front groups that viciously attacked real reform through a sophisticated disinformation campaign. We know that this is the two-prong strategy employed by insurance companies because one of their own top PR people quit in disgust and spilled the beans. His name is Wendell Potter. He worked for Cigna insurance. He wrote a book called Deadly Spin that is on its way to becoming a best seller. And he joins me in studio this morning.

GUEST: Wendell Potter, Senior Fellow in Healthcare at the Center for Media and Democracy