You are right that it can’t be done. But I am curious why you defend the Obamacare ruling. That argument that Roberts is a sly dog playing chess while all the rest of us, Scalia, Thomas and the entire conservative movement, are too stupid to realize it, is deluded or intentionally meant to make excuses for a pitiful weak Supreme Court justice who had only pretended to be a conservative. The law was dead. Dead. D E A D dead. Roberts singlehandedly resurrected it, with a ridiculous tax argument that even the libs didn’t make. If you defend that, you may be in the wrong place.
However, it is true that a tax by any other name is still a tax as Shakespeare said, Ralph Shakespeare that is.
We all saw through The Disaster's minions in Congress charade to call it anything but a tax and apparently Roberts thinks that way too.
This is the crucial effect of the ruling though, now since taxes can be part of “reconciliation” bills which cannot be filibustered this law can be changed even if we don't get a filibuster-proof majority.
I was as disappointed as everyone else about this ruling as it appeared to be a slam dunk to me.
One good thing about it, though, is that it made people even madder and more determined to get rid of this monstrosity.