T

he evening before the U.S. Supreme Court handed down its decision on the constitutionality of the health care reform law, my wife asked me how I thought the justices would rule.

Surprisingly, despite the many stories I had written about the challenges to the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, I had given little thought on what the court's decision would be.

Still, I paused only briefly and said it will be 5-4 in favor of the law, with Chief Justice John Roberts casting the deciding vote. The penalty for not having coverage is a tax, I told my wife, and Congress has the constitutional right to impose taxes.

That is pretty much how the court ruled in its decision handed down the next day.

Yet however prescient I was on the June ruling, that prescience unfortunately doesn't extend to what I think will happen next.

That said, I hope the ruling has cooled passions and the overheated rhetoric about the law that has been so abundant.

Instead, I would hope lawmakers move away from political stunts, such as last month's meaningless and time-wasting vote by the House of Representatives to repeal the law. That was true political showboating given that the measure never would be taken up in the Senate while the Democrats hold the majority.

A far wiser course of action for lawmakers—Republicans and Democrats alike—would be to identify which parts of the law need to improved, removed or adjusted, and take action to do that.

And I hope the silly statements, repeated so many times since the enactment of the reform legislation, disappear.

Top on my list would be the use of the term “Obamacare” in referring to the law.

That term is derived from “Hillarycare,” a reference to the reform legislation of 1993-94.

That term had a legitimate basis then because Hillary Clinton, who headed a health care reform task force, and her staff largely—and behind closed doors—wrote the legislation. It quickly died in Congress.

By contrast, while the enactment of reform legislation was at the top of the Obama administration's domestic agenda, the measure was put together by congressional Democrats.

Finally, I would hope that regulators move as quickly as possible in developing and finalizing regulations that employers and others so urgently need to plan and decide on what changes they will need to make to comply with the health care reform law.

Regrettably in recent months, too often regulators have vaguely said “soon” when asked when a rule will be finalized or more guidance provided.

Well, 2014 will be here soon enough and employers, whether they are managing small health care programs or multi-billion dollar ones, need a reasonable amount of time to make any necessary changes to their plans. Regulators need to be responsive to that very real-world need.