The New TV Apps Will Be Social, And A Whole Lot More

Word has gotten out that Apple is dropping its YouTube app from the next version of its mobile operating system, iOS 6. And the next version of the Macintosh OS X, Mountain Lion, includes Vimeo, but not YouTube, in the video sharing options. What’s more, last week, Hulu Plus dropped unannounced into Apple TV.

Clearly there are some big shifts going on regarding video and TV content on the web, most notably by Apple away from Google. But these are all just opening shots in the growing battle for the future of TV. The moves that Apple is making are setting the stage for app-enabled television experiences to become dominant among consumers.

The implications of this are huge—and complicated. When Apple opens up the Apple TV platform to developers and content distributors, the way will be clear for a multitude of new business models for how to capture and monetize viewership.

If Apple is going to create a true platform out of Apple TV, as I believe it will, the advertising-driven business models of the broadcast networks and the subscription + advertising models of the cable companies will exist side-by-side—and compete head-to-head—with new models.

Many of the ideas that have bubbled up for TV apps assume that viewers want to be “social” while they are watching, tweeting, posting to Facebook, watching what their “friends” are watching. For teenagers who text at the Thanksgiving table, this is probably a good guess, but I think it undersells what is really valuable about social media, what app-enabled TV can do and what most viewers most want.

I think what viewers most want is to know what to watch. Not just what is popular, but of all the possibilities, what they will most uniquely enjoy.

Shayndi Raice wrote a good overview of some new and soon-to-be-updated social TV apps in The Wall Street Journal. She describes the first generation of apps as focusing on checking in to real-time chats. One example of this approach is GetGlue, who found “That the ‘check-in’ never created enough critical mass to create a viable social TV community on its own.” The company is pushing their Facebook integration further and uses its “connect” feature to “show a scrolling calendar with the shows, movies and sports that users’ might like. It will show whether friends who use the app are watching the same show.” GetGlue’s business model hinges on “second screen” advertising that sends coordinated marketing messages to the user’s mobile devices while they watch. Will watching “Jersey Shore” make you hungry for a pizza?

Other notable upcoming apps, according to Raice, include Dijit, Peel and a soon-to-be-revamped TV Guide mobile. At best, these apps will not only curate what you can watch, but control your TV as well. GetGlue will soon be able to control DirectTV’s set-top boxes and Peel for Android (see image above) can currently launch shows on your TV, with iOS capabilities coming soon.

Each of these apps is looking for an edge, or something unique to sell.Sidecastr is an iPad app with their own “patent pending ACR (audio fingerprint based) system,” that recognizes the sound of the show you are watching so that it can synchronize relevant social commentary. This enables the app to time spoilers appropriately, and give you a “live” feel, even if you are “time shifting.”

But making all of the deals necessary to assure a really consistent experience across different devices, geographies and cable systems is a daunting task, and there are bound to be a lot of frustrated users at first. As Forrester Researchanalyst James McQuivey told the Journal, many of these start-ups will be takeover targets for the larger players, “It is much more likely that these vendors are building products that will be features tomorrow.”

The limited pool of initial users will seriously restrict the usefulness of these new apps, so the big players will have a huge advantage if they can program compelling experiences. One potential player that is not often discussed in this context is Twitter. Rumors, now squelched, about Apple buying a stake in the social network didn’t touch on any relationship with Apple TV, but I think there are some intriguing possibilities.

Lost Remote’s Natan Edelsburg interviewed Steven Brand of Sidecastr, who said, “We especially want to be viewed by the Twitter community as the ideal Twitter integrated 2nd screen app ‘purpose-built’ for watching TV.” Edelsburg wisely retorted,  “Twitter is probably the ideal Twitter second screen app.” Especially now that Twitter is restricting its API, it will have the ability to easily do things that will be difficult for outside developers to achieve. For instance, Twitter could show you the content recommendations not only of the people you follow, but of the people they follow as well. In this way, building networks concentrically outward, Twitter could scale the data set that it pulls from to go with a given user and a given application.

Facebook can do similar things as well, but I think their case raises the issue of the difference between your “friends” and what I like to call your “content friends.” You may love your old high school buddies dearly, but you don’t necessarily care that they are watching. On the other hand, if William Gibsonactually watches TV, I might be very interested in what he’s choosing.

The “social-ness” of television is not just about your “friends,” but about the community of interests and affinities. There are all kinds of ways to get at those associations, and it will be job #1 for social TV apps to explore all of the ways to deliver relevant recommendations to viewers. Once television—through Apple TV, Google TV, Roku, Boxee, whatever—fully takes on the app model, the fight for home screen space will be intense. Just like Google search, whatever is on the the first page, or the first three pages, of a viewer’s home screen will be most of what they will watch. Some of those icons will be for specific content channels that the user is particularly interested in, like ESPN, Bravo or (ahem) Fox News. But there are all manner of curation schemes—data-driven, crowd sourced or expert-guided—that will compete for attention. Innovative start-ups that have access to the data sets of the big players will play a big role here, but so, too, will individual (or small group) curators who—like us bloggers—will develop followings based on the value they bring to their audiences.

It’s a really exciting time to enter this arena. One way or another, whether through Apple or Google, Netflixor Time Warner, these apps will proliferate and become a significant channel through which viewers decide what to watch and what else to do while watching. These apps will be social, yes, but in a much more capacious definition of that term than we now understand. The content, itself, is a social network.

The New Geography Of Success In The U.S. And The Trap Of The 'New Normal'

Editor’s Note: This post is part of a new special section called “Reinventing America.” As part of this effort, demographer Joel Kotkin and more than a dozen other Forbes contributors and staff writers will focus attention on the challenges facing towns, cities and traditional industries across the nation–and highlight the growing number of surprising success stories we’re seeing, too. Over the coming months we’ll have stories, rankings of who’s doing it right (and wrong), and, we hope, great conversations with readers, so please join in.

This year’s presidential election is fast becoming an ode to diminished expectations. Neither candidate is advancing a reasonable refutation of the conventional wisdom that America is in the grips of a “new normal” — an era of low growth, persistently high unemployment and less upward mobility, particularly for the working class. 

Certainly recent economic news of slowing growth and job creation bolster the pessimists’ case. But Americans may face far better prospects than portrayed by our dueling presidential mediocrities. Let’s look at those states that have found their own way out of the “new normal,” in some cases reversing all the losses of the Great Recession and then some.

The states that have added the most jobs since 2007— Texas, North Dakota, Louisiana, Oklahoma and Alaska – are located in a vast energy and commodities corridor extending from the western Gulf to the northern tip of the Continent. New Yorkand Washington, D.C., prime beneficiaries of monetary easing and a growing federal government, have also clawed back.

But the big winners are in the central energy corridor. Since 2007, Texas has created almost five times as many jobs as New York; California is still down almost 900,000 jobs and Illinois is off close to 300,000.

This should represent what Walter Russell Mead calls “a new geography of power,” the anointing of new places Americans and business go to find opportunity. One example: five of the six best cities for starting over in 2012, according to TheStreet.com, were in the Dakotas, Utah, Iowa and Nebraska.

Why the energy and agriculture states? Since the onset of the new century, much of the sustained growth in the world has taken place not in the financial or information capitals, but in regions that produce basic commodities like energy and food. In the high-income world, the consistently best-performing countries since 2008 have also tended to be resource-rich ones such as Norway, Australia and Canada. Blue social policies work best when financed by petro-dollars and minerals sales.

Domestic and European demand may fall in the next few years, but increasingly global commodity and energy markets are driven by the expanding needs of the major developing countries. This has helped keep energy prices high, particularly for oil. Being good at exploration and drilling has been more profitable than social media. Texas alone has added nearly 200,000 jobs in its oil and gas sector over the past decade and Oklahoma some 45,000. The Lone Star energy sector created twice as many jobs as exist in the software sector in San Jose and San Francisco combined. These jobs have been an outstanding driver of high-wage employment, with an average salary of upwards of $75,000, and located usually in less expensive areas.

Choice plays an important part in the growth. The energy boom has supercharged the economies of the states that have welcomed this growth, including Texas, Oklahoma, Louisiana, North Dakota, Wyoming and Alaska. It has not been much help to New York and California, which are reluctant to crack rocks to extract even relatively cleaner carbon-based fuels like natural gas. In contrast, long-suffering Ohio and Pennsylvania, where there have been significant new finds of shale oil and gas, appear to have decided that Texas, not California, is the model for spurring growth.

The energy-producing states can look forward to a bright future in the long run. U.S. oil and Canadian reserves now stand at over 2 trillion barrels and constitute more than three times the total estimated reserves of the Middle East and North Africa. Observers such as the New America Foundation’sMichael Lind believe that new discoveries, particularly of natural gas, mean that we might actually be living in an era of “peak renewables,” and at the onset of a “very long age of fossil fuels.”

Growth of these sectors — along with construction and manufacturing — could prove critical to our beleaguered working class. There’s not much respect among the university-dominated pundit class for people who work with  their hands or have specific tangible  skills. Instead they need to lower their expectations and seek, as Slate recently suggested, to find work “in the service sector supporting America’s innovative class.”

In this neo-Victorian society, the “new normal” means a society dominated by  “innovative” or “creative” masters and their chosen, lucky servants. Leave your job and family in the Midwest or Nevada to become a toenail painter in Silicon Valley, San Francisco or Boston. Besides losing any sense of one’s independence, it’s hard to see how a barber or gardener can live decently, particularly with a family, in such expensive places.

This bleak reality may not be inevitable, though. In many places construction employment is on the rise from its nadir in 2010. This recovery has been anationwide phenomena but is, not surprisingly, most evident in growth stateslike Montana, Colorado, Indiana, Iowa, Nebraska, Tennessee and Utah.

At the same time over the last two years the nation has added more than 400,000 manufacturing jobs, led by the industrial states hit hardest by the recession. Though these gains are small compared to the losses earlier in the decade, the growth is encouraging; automakers and other industries already are complaining about severe shortages of skilled labor. Maybe, after all, life as a dog-walker and hostel denizen in Palo Alto is not the best one can hope for if you can make enough to afford a nice suburban house outside Columbus or Detroit.

The pundit class may be ready to write off the American dream but many Midwest states are working  to restore it. Over the past two yearsMichigan and Ohio have experienced the biggest drop in unemployment of any states in the union; Michigan leads the way with a drop of almost five percentage points, while Ohio comes in second with a nearly three-point decline. Other key Great Lakes battlegrounds—Wisconsin, Indiana and arguably Missouri—have also seen two-point drops in their unemployment numbers.

Why is this happening? A lot of it has to do with business-friendly state regimes. Unlike Illinois, increasingly the sad sack  of the Midwest, these states have cut taxes, worked to increase the availability of skill training and streamlined regulations. This has allowed them to take advantage of new opportunities.

Improving the business climate represents the third critical element for overcoming the new normal. Most rundowns of the states with consistently favorable business and tax climates – as judged by executives — start with Texas, Utah and South Dakota. Many states that are recovering best from the recession, like Louisiana, Wisconsin, Florida, Ohio, Michigan and Arizona, all have been improving their rankings in business surveys over recent years.

But this should not be seen as an exclusively red state phenomenon. Some blue states as well, notably Washington, have worked hard to keep taxes tolerable and have promoted a rapid expansion of their  industrial sector. Democratic-leaning Colorado, under the leadership of pragmatic Gov. John Hickenlooper, has also strived to main a good business climate and promote growth.

What works, it appears, is not the mindless embrace of GOP or Democratic ideology, but a model that drives economic growth. It’s not rocket science: sensible regulation, moderate taxes and investments to spur job creation and productivity. “There is no Democratic or Republican way to sweep streets,” legendary New York City Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia once remarked and the same is true of economic growth.

The stories of the successful states tell us the key to success lies  in promoting basic industries like energy, agriculture and manufacturing — which then create business service and high-skilled jobs — combined with a broad agenda favorable to entrepreneurs of all kinds. If only one of our presidential candidates would get the message.

Ten Things to Know Before Interviewing at Facebook

Are you eager to land a coveted position at Facebook? Join the club. If you’re lucky enough to get an interview with the social media giant, famous for its laid-back culture and superb perks, there are a few things you should know.

Glassdoor.com, a jobs and career community where people share information and opinions about their workplaces, combed through hundreds of employee reviews to find what Facebook employees and job candidates say about the interview experience.

“If you’re in the job market, no matter where you interview, you want to be prepared as possible so that you can put your best foot forward,” says Glassdoor spokesperson Samantha Zupan. “Getting insights into specific companies, like Facebook, can help you find out what it’s like to interview at a company.”

Here are 10 things job seekers should know about Facebook before the interview:

• Let your passion for the job come through. This is essential for an interview at any company, but a Facebook IT analyst candidate said it’s particularly important at Facebook that you express your passion for the everyday tasks and responsibilities that the job requires. How do you do this? Talk enthusiastically about your goals, your accomplishments and any contributions you made to a former employer.

• Make time for multiple, lengthy interviews. A Facebook operations engineer candidate said: “I had a quick screening phone interview with the recruiter, before having two technical phone interviews, where we shared a collaborative text document so that they could see what I typed. Each of the two interviews lasted about 45 to 60 minutes. Finally, I had a somewhat shorter (30 minute) management interview.”  “Multiple interviews can give you a chance to interview with a mix of people who you may be working with including a recruiter, an H.R. person, various team members, top executives and in some cases the CEO,” Zupan says. “While it can be tiring to go through interview after interview, it’s a good opportunity for a candidate to interview the company to determine if the job opportunity is going to be a good fit.”

• Be prepared to discuss how you’ve worked well in a team environment. A Facebook user operations analyst candidate pointed out: “The questions consisted largely of my experiences working on a team, what I thought I brought to teams, what to do if a team member is not participating, etcetera.” Before your interview, think about specific instances where you thrived as a team member or team leader. Also think about the challenges of team projects, and how you would resolve them.

• Don’t expect everything to go flawlessly during the interview. A Facebook Human Resources candidate said there was general confusion as to what the essential responsibilities of the actual role were going to be. “I left thinking their recruiting and interviewing process could sure use some refinement,” the candidate wrote. “The important lesson here is to remember to think about more than your responses to interview questions,” Zupan says. “You should also be thinking about the entire interview experience. For example, consider what the interview experience says about the company culture, the work environment and workplace relationships.”

• Think about what you would do to improve Facebook. A Facebook product marketing candidate wrote: “The interviews typically involved them asking me questions about issues Facebook was facing, then turning my answer into a case around how to improve that. Definitely think about metrics before heading to your interview,” the candidate suggested.

• Consider if the company culture is a good fit for you. A Facebook senior technical recruiter candidate noted that the Facebook office he or she interviewed at was open and lively; yet “I could see where it could be somewhat distracting,” the candidate wrote. “Remember that companies and jobs are not one size fits all,” Zupan says. “Some people like a structured work environment, whereas others may thrive in a more casual environment.” Another way to determine if the company is a good fit is to meet your would-be colleagues and bosses. A Facebook software engineer candidate said: “After the interview, I wasn’t sure if I would be happy working at Facebook so they let me come back and speak with my would-be manager and director, as well as some coworkers, so I could make a good decision.”

• Know the appropriate interview attire. You may learn from the company’s website that the culture is laid back and informal—but that doesn’t mean you should sport sweats to the interview. A Facebook user operations analyst candidate suggested that you wear “business professional” attire, even though the interviewer will most likely be in jeans and a T-shirt. “Depending on the job and the company, there can be some wiggle room in terms of how professionally you dress,” Zupan says. “But I suggest veering on the safe side and dressing up for an interview – it’s your opportunity to present yourself in the best light possible.”

• Be prepared for tough (or even odd) interview questions. Facebook candidates were asked questions like: “How would add new Facebook members to the database of members, and code their relationships to others in the database?” “If you were an animal what kind would you be and why?” “What is the difference between Facebook ads and Google Ads?” “Should Facebook be available in China?” and “What do you see as Facebook’s biggest challenge in the next five years?” There is no real way to prepare for such questions—but remember that the interviewer is assessing your thought process and how you perform under pressure. Stay calm and take your time answering the tough questions.

• Get the inside scoop from someone who works there. See if you have an inside connection at the company; someone who can tell you what it’s like to work and interview at the company. How? Spread the word that you’re interested in working at Facebook, search on sites like LinkedIn to find connections, or sign in to Glassdoor using your Facebook account to see which of your friends (or friends of friends) have a connection to the company, using its new “Inside Connections” tool.

• Be prepared to sign a non-disclosure agreement. A Facebook software engineer candidate wrote on the Glassdoor site that the firm had asked him to bring a signed copy of the non-disclosure agreement to the interview. “Candidates shouldn’t be scared away by NDAs, but it is important to read the terms of the agreement carefully so you know what a company is asking,” Zupan says.

Think You Control The Investments In Your 401(k)? Read This Horror Story

Think you control the investments in your 401(k) and are on the hook for any gains or losses? Well, you’re half right, anyway.  In certain circumstances your investments can be switched without your approval, but you’re still on the hook for the losses. That’s the disturbing lesson in a decision handed down last week by a three judge panel of the Sixth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals. Here’s the story:  James C. Bidwell and Susan Wilson were long-time members of the emergency room flight crew at the University of Louisville’s Medical Center. Both participated in the not-for-profit hospital’s 403(b) plan —it’s like a 401k– and had consciously chosen to invest 100% of their savings in Lincoln National Corp.’s   Stable Value Fund, which guarantees return of principal and at least 3% interest a year. Until 2006, many employers, including the Medical Center, used such stable value funds as the “default” option for workers who didn’t pick their own investments, because they didn’t want liability if workers lost money. But in the Pension Protection Act of 2006, as part of an effort to boost the “automatic enrollment” of workers in retirement savings plans, Congress decided to protect employers from liability if they invest the savings of workers who neglect to pick their own investments in a “qualified default investment alternative” approved by the Department of Labor. In 2007, DOL named target date funds—but not stable value funds—as qualified default investments. Target funds hold a mix of stocks and bonds that gets more conservative (i.e. with fewer stocks) as a worker approaches his target retirement date. While target date funds  don’t guarantee principal, DOL decided they’re a better long term bet for workers, particularly young ones.  Noting that  some plan administrators might not know who had consciously invested in a stable value fund and who had previously ended up in one by default, DOL even allowed employers to switch both categories of workers and escape liability. On June 16, 2008, at the Medical Center’s behest, Lincoln Retirement Services Co. mailed letters to all 2,532 plan participants with 100% of their money in the stable value fund saying they would be switched into one of Lincoln’s LifeSpan (target date) funds in a month, unless they objected.  Both  Bidwelll and Wilson swore in affidavits that they open all their retirement plan mail and never got the notices, which were sent by regular first class mail. Both say they didn’t learn of the switch until they got their third quarter 2008 plan statements in mid-October. Disastrous timing. Between July 16^th and Oct. 15^th, the S&P 500 index had fallen 27%. “They opened the statements and both told me their mouths flew open. They were aghast at what had happened,” their attorney,  John Frith Stewart,  of Stewart, Roelandt, Craigmyle & Lynch in Crestwood, Kentucky, said in an interview. Both workers immediately called to switch their money back to the stable fund, but by that time Bidwell had lost $85,000 and Wilson $16,900.   The Medical Center plan administrator denied their requests to be made whole and both the district court and a three judge appeals panel agreed the hospital qualified for protection from  liability under the new safe harbor rules. Stewart argued, unsuccessfully, that DOL exceeded its authority in allowing plan participants who had chosen their own investments (instead of just those who were already in a default) to be switched. He also argued that even the DOL regulations require employees to be in “receipt” of a notice before an automatic switch–and there was evidence his clients never received a  notice.  “It doesn’t say `once a notice has been mailed’. It says ` receipt’,’’ Stewart complains.  Bidwell and Wilson haven’t yet decided whether they’ll ask for the case to be reheard en banc—that is by the full appeals court. One irony of this case, Stewart says, is “so many people will take an envelope (from their retirement plan) and toss it aside. But these clients were meticulous in their work and in checking their letters.” He notes that because the two were mostly worked outside the hospital, they didn’t get communications provided at work to other plan participants. “Somebody has changed the rules on you without you knowing it. That’s the horrendous part,’’ he says.Target Date Funds Devour Nation’s 401(k)s! Disney Or Hitchcock? Should You Trust Your Retirement To A Target Date Fund?

Yahoo, Facebook Kiss And Make Up, Ending Crazy Patent War

Ending one of the more bizarre spats in Silicon Valley lately, Yahoo and Facebook have settled their patent dispute. Yahoo had sued Facebook back in March, alleging the social network infringed on 10 Yahoo patents concerning advertising and social networking itself.

The suit had turned much of Silicon Valley against Yahoo, since the suit seemed so clearly timed to force soon-to-go-public Facebook into coughing up a big cash or stock settlement. But the move backfired, as Facebook then not only spent big bucks to buy its own patent trove, it countersued Yahoo. Not long afterward, Yahoo’s then-CEO Scott Thompson, whom some has said was a driver of the suit, left under a cloud thanks to apparent doctoring of his resume. In early June,negotiations began between the two companies to end the fight.

How dumb an idea was Yahoo’s decision to sue one of the most powerful and influential companies in technology today, one that had been a partner up to then? So dumb that the settlement doesn’t include monetary considerations to Yahoo at all, beyond a vague promise to work together more closely in the future–promises that Yahoo CEO Ross Levinsohn and Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg failed to shed any more light on in aninterview with AllThingsD’s Kara Swisher. From the release:

Yahoo! and Facebook today announced that they have entered into definitive agreements that launch a new advertising partnership, extend and expand distribution arrangements, and settle all pending patent claims between the companies.

Under the agreements, which include a patent portfolio cross-license, the parties will work together to bring consumers and advertisers premium media experiences promoted and distributed across both Yahoo! and Facebook. Yahoo! and Facebook will also work together to bring Yahoo!’s large media event coverage to Facebook users by collaborating on social integrations on the Yahoo! site. …

 Going forward, Yahoo! and Facebook have agreed to work more closely and collaborate together on multiple tent-pole and anchor events annually over the next several years to provide unparalleled experiences for consumers and world-class sponsorship opportunities for advertisers.

What the deal doesn’t settle, however, is the wretched state of patent law, especially as applied to fast-changing technology industries, that made the short-lived war possible in the first place. Some companies, such as Twitter, are trying to change the game with new policies that limit when they can sue. And the influential appeals court judge who recently tossed out Apple’s patent lawsuit againstGoogle‘s Motorola Mobility unit, Richard Posner, is questioning whether software should be patentable at all.

But notwithstanding the Yahoo-Facebook accord, it seems far more likely that patent wars will worsen before they improve.

Whew! Justice Roberts' Decision Means Focus Can Now Turn to Real Health Care Dilemma

Whew! Now that’s over, maybe we can get back to the real work at hand. Will the Affordable Care Act be successful? It’s a grand experiment. And reporting on the mandate and exchanges that go into effect after 2014 is going to be the story in health care in the U.S. for years to come.

While in my post yesterday  I summarized where health care in America will go, if as the betting assumed the mandate was struck down, all attention now can turn to speculation about how the mandate will actually work.  Based on reporting by my staff at Bloomberg News when I was running the health team there last year,  and similar stories elsewhere, the economic argument for the mandate is solid.

To summarize, the mandate requires everyone who isn’t covered by an employer’s health plan, or by a government plan, to buy health insurance or pay a fee (the Court says it’s a tax!). Each state will be required to set up a web-based site where insurance buyers can compare and shop for plans. Insurers will have to take all comers, no matter if they have pre-existing medical conditions. The economic argument, which as readers know was initially a conservative and Republican idea going back to the early 1990s, is that insurers can afford the cost of care for the sick, such as those who already have a health condition, with the premiums paid for young and healthy people who are unlikely to require much, if any, care.

The evidence that coupling the requirement to buy insurance with a so-called “guaranteed issue,’’ the phrase that means insurance must by sold to those even with a previously existing medical condition, is already emerging from Massachusetts. Studies show most the population is now covered by some private or public plan. Most important, insurance rates to consumers who buy insurance on their own have held steady, suggesting that insurers are able to spread the risk as the mandate’s original creators back in the 90s expected. Health costs to the Massachusetts government have jumped, mostly due to subsidies to help pay for premiums offered to those with lower incomes. That surely will happen as a result of the national mandate, too.

What will be important to watch is whether private insurance companies will actually sell coverage via the exchanges and whether the new business they gain will be a boon to their bottom line. Most important, and critical to Obamacare’s success, is whether Aetna, Cigna, UnitedHealth, the blue cross plans and others, take advantage of all the new customers by creating plans that, as I noted in yesterday’s post, actually give doctors, hospitals and patients an incentive to make cost-effective decisions. By having so much of the population covered either by private insurers, or by Medicaid, as a result of the law’s expansion of coverage – also upheld by the Court – there is a real opportunity for the first time ever to coordinate and manage care. That’s where the Obamacare experiment will really matter.

The constitutional issue of the mandate all along seemed like an almost two year distraction. Attention now must turn to rule making out of the Department of Health and Human Services, the willingness of private insurers to offer interesting coverage plans at attractive rates to consumers not covered by employers or government plans, and how the state run web-based exchanges are set up.

In the end, the court ruled 5-4, as many expected. The shocker for court watchers was that Justice Roberts joined the majority. He did so by dismissing the so-called commerce clause as the point of contention and instead bought the Solicitor General’s argument that the mandate is constitutional because it involves the federal government’s power to tax. Opt out of buying insurance, the ruling states, and one simply can pay a tax. Interestingly, the law never calls the opt-out payment a tax, but rather a fee or assessment.

As others are noting more eloquently than me, the ruling is likely to stand as one of the most influential in Supreme Court history. The political fallout will be worth watching, too, as Governor Romney can campaign on repealing the law and President Obama can tout passage of the law the as the kind of LBJ or Roosevelt accomplishment that makes history. Senator Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky, already is setting up the battle lines with this, as quoted today, on CBS News:

“Today’s decision makes one thing clear: Congress must act to repeal this misguided law. Obamacare has not only limited choices and increased health care costs for American families, it has made it harder for American businesses to hire.’’

By the way, if you are looking for a great blow-by-blow as to how the law came about, and especially how the mandate came to be despite President Obama’s initial antagonism to it, I suggest you read Fighting for Your Health: the Epic Battle to Make Health Care a Right in the United States by Richard Kirsch.