The 11th Circuit Court of Appeals declares the insurance mandate in the health care reform law unconstitutional.
Of course, there’s no way SCOTUS will do this.
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Come for the politics, stay for the snark.
Not loving this new fraud based economy.
Authoritarian republicans are opposed to freedom for the rest of us.
Republicans in disarray!
Polls are now a reliable indicator of what corporate Republicans want us to think.
Balloon Juice, where there is always someone who will say you’re doing it wrong.
Well, whatever it is, it’s better than being a Republican.
Fuck these fucking interesting times.
No offense, but this thread hasn’t been about you for quite a while.
They want us to be overwhelmed and exhausted. Focus. Resist. Oppose.
“Until such time as the world ends, we will act as though it intends to spin on.”
Fundamental belief of white supremacy: white people are presumed innocent, minorities are presumed guilty.
They were going to turn on one another at some point. It was inevitable.
You’re just a puppy masquerading as an old coot.
Republicans got rid of McCarthy. Democrats chose not to save him.
Imperialist aggressors must be defeated, or the whole world loses.
It may be funny to you motherfucker, but it’s not funny to me.
The words do not have to be perfect.
Hey hey, RFK, how many kids did you kill today?
New McCarthy, same old McCarthyism.
Since when do we limit our critiques to things we could do better ourselves?
Shallow, uninformed, and lacking identity
Wow, I can’t imagine what it was like to comment in morse code.
One lie, alone, tears the fabric of reality.
Republican speaker of the house Mike Johnson is the bland and smiling face of evil.
You are here: Home / All right, all you smart lawyers
RalfW
Medicare for all may be our only hope.
.
Or a peasant revolution.
Reality Check
So who did it?
Was it Teh Shock Doctrine and Dizazter Kapitalizm? Was it the Kock Bros.? Diebold?
Hunter Gathers
The rest of the law stands, as if that makes any fucking sense.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
I believe you want to write “no way”.
The Snarxist Formerly Known as Kryptik
So….what now?
Seriously, I’m wondering what this will practically result in, what the actual next step in this farce is.
Hunter Gathers
@Reality Check: I’m going to go with upper class Caucasian middle aged men appointed by other upper class Caucasian middle aged men. Whitey, in other words.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
We’re all still waiting for SCOTUS to rule, but let’s see how quickly the insurance companies howl.
Reality Check
@The Snarxist Formerly Known as Kryptik:
SCOTUS overturns the law, and liberals go nuts.
Villago Delenda Est
Yeah, but what was their reasoning that it’s “unconstitutional”?
We know that the fetid little shitstain that is Unreality Check is crowing, but why? What is the basis of this?
There’s no information on what this is all about. It’s a first report. First reports SUCK.
The Snarxist Formerly Known as Kryptik
@Belafon (formerly anonevent):
If it’s all up to the Supremes, then I’m gonna start stocking up on ‘Tussin.
Elie
@Belafon (formerly anonevent):
You got that right — Howl and screech like banshees
Ol' Dirty DougJ
@Belafon (formerly anonevent):
Thanks.
Reality Check
@Hunter Gathers:
Oh, you’re right, I should have added “it doesn’t matter, let’s just play the race card” to those list of choices. My mistake!
Maybe mclaren can let us in on the REAL story about how the federal court system is controlled by the Five Jew Bankers of Geneva, and the only solution is a Bolshevik revolt.
cintibud
@Reality Check:
No, only the mandate is up for review, meaning the insurance companies go nuts. Everyone still has coverage, but the insurance companies get screwed as folks don’t pay for insurance unless/until they get sick
MobiusKlein
11th circuit is FLA,Alabama / Georgia
two open seats. 9 R appointees, 7 D.
Not sure if it’s the whole set, or just a few.
eemom
There’s also a Sixth Circuit decision (that IIRC none of y’all Supreme Court bookmakers noticed when it came out) that went the other way. So now there is officially a “split in the Circuits” and it will go to the Supreme Court.
I’ll be under the bed. Just wake me when it’s over.
ETA: and the Sixth Circuit panel included a Republican appointee.
Corner Stone
@cintibud:
How long do you think that situation will last?
shargash
This court is one of the most corporatist courts in US history, as well as one of the most authoritarian. It is hard to believe they’ll let their good buddy corporate persons down by letting the appelate court decision stand.
And, yes, the insurance companies will howl. They paid good money for that mandate.
NonyNony
@cintibud:
That would be the best possible outcome of the Tea Party crowd trying to get this overturned. Because I will laugh my ass off at insurance company execs (who tend to vote Republican) getting stabbed in the neck by the Teabaggers.
My Truth Hurts
I never liked the mandate. If you are forcing me to buy insurance I will take the insurance I have already been paying for and will continue to pay for for my entire working life, Medicare, thank you.
Chris
@Reality Check:
I believe you’ll find that it was Bolshevism and the Bolshevik Revolt that was accused of being controlled by the Five Jew Bankers of Geneva, by another batch of right-wing psychopaths. But hey, Jonah Goldberg wrote a book called Liberal Fascism, QED, bitches!
eemom
also too, this is a panel decision. Could be reversed en banc (i.e., upon review by all the judges on the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals).
Hunter Gathers
@Reality Check: And I dealt it from the bottom of the deck too.
srv
This is what Circuit Courts do. Life would be boring if SCOTUS never had any work to do.
cintibud
@Corner Stone: Oh, there will be changes, but total repeal is only one option and not likely as long as O is president. That also puts single payer back on the table
eric
@Corner Stone: If I were the Feds, I would not file Cert. though I think Obama has always defended federal laws before. I would forgive the hypocrisy this once. :)
Suffern ACE
@cintibud: Yep. Overturned the decision that the entire bill is unconstitutional. Severability and whatnot. Court does not buy three legged stool. Prefers two legged variety.
Reality Check
@Chris:
The Soviet Union was anti-semitic, as most leftist regimes are.
Chyron HR
@Reality Check:
So do you Republicans hate all the nefarious Jew bankers, or just George Soros?
Q.Q. Moar
@Reality Check: The race card is always the trump card because conservatives are almost always guilty of being racist dipshits. Present company excepted, I’m sure.
Corner Stone
@RalfW:
Did you see the blurb about Downing Street determining how to block all internet and cel communications to quell the UK riots?
jheartney
That was my impression as well; the mandate was put in to protect the insurance companies from adverse selection. I think I’ll go to Sam’s for bulk popcorn.
The Snarxist Formerly Known as Kryptik
@Corner Stone:
I have a brilliant idea, lets stop the fire with giant wooden fences! That’ll keep it contained!
Reality Check
SCOTUS can just say “fuck it” and decide to strike down the whole law if they want.
kindness
@The Snarxist Formerly Known as Kryptik: The result?
It’ll now go to the full 11th Circuit Court & be heard & then it will go to the Supreme Court. None of this will happen before the 2012 elections though.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@Reality Check: Actually, RC, I’m kind of curious how they decided to overturn the mandate? Considering they are supposed to be originalists and all, and the founding father’s had no trouble forcing people to pay taxes into a government run health care system, specifically commercial sailors. And the founders did this with the intent of making US commercial sailing more competitive with the rest of the world.
Reality Check
@Chyron HR:
The paranoia over Soros is just as ridiculous, childish, and paranoid as the howling about how everything is a Koch Brothers Konspiracy.
The Snarxist Formerly Known as Kryptik
@kindness:
Geh…all this is just feeling increasingly annoying and arcane to the point that I’m not sure if I should care.
JM
@Reality Check:
Simple minds, simple answers.
Hey, look! A false analogy! Cling to it for dear life while everyone else talks over your head!
Reality Check
Fun Fact: The Kochtopus Konspiracy was originally a theory developed by the Paultards to explain why Ron Paul didn’t win the GOP nomination. It was stolen, see, by the KOCH BROTHERS! *duh duh duuuuuuuuuuh*
Martin
Well, such is the outcome of imperfect solutions to problems. If SCOTUS strikes it down, Medicare gets about half a trillion dollars more expensive over a decade and the argument for single payer gets somewhat stronger with moderates and not-insane free marketers. If SCOTUS upholds it, it’s stand as a precedent for what government can do to solve their budgetary woes.
trollhattan
Consider the Republican judicial age game coupled with their intransigence with Obama’s nominations, and you have a recipe for disaster.
http://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2011/08/where-are-all-the-young-liberal-judges
themanintheguyfawkesmask
@cintibud:
Couldn’t happen to a nicer buncha folks. well, except the bankstas.
JM
Hey, look! He’s got a fun fact! Surely they’ll run for cover now! Why they’ll have to!
I guess they didn’t report this in “Reality Check’s” trailer park.
Reality Check
@JM:
Walker was humoring the idiot. If he really knew Koch he would have known that the prank caller sounds nothing like him.
But hey, glad to see the American left becoming nearly as crazy as the Paultards.
trollhattan
@Reality Check:
A quiz: Who said this?
“If we’re going to give a lot of money, we’ll make darn sure they spend it in a way that goes along with our intent, and if they make a wrong turn and start doing things we don’t agree with, we withdraw funding.”
TenguPhule
Hilarity will ensue.
JM
@Reality Check:
Quick! Make something up! Make the evidence go away! It burns! It burns!
Christ you’re weak.
Reality Check
@trollhattan:
TEH KOCHS!!!! Run for your life, they control all!
One day the Forces of Evil (the Koch Brothers, Diebold, Halliburton, Zombie Richard Nixon, and Grover Norquist) will form a Supervillan organization known as the Committee for Disaster Capitalism, and then only Naomi Klein and her superpowers of false equivalency and historical ignorance will save us!
Q.Q. Moar
“SCOTUS can just say “fuck it” and decide to strike down the whole law if they want.”
Which ‘whole law’ is that? The Affordable Care Act was a large, comprehensive set of new laws and regulations. If SCOTUS finds the mandate unconstitutional, it will not suddenly become legal again for insurance companies to deny pre-existing conditions.
I think ACA is already too radioactive to repeal, at least in whole. Imagine a campaign season full of advertisements saying “Republicans voted to let insurance companies deny care to your children…”
TenguPhule
So Reality Impaired is whining about being the uke instead of the seme this time?
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@Reality Check: They could also say fuck it and:
1. Uphold the original law.
2. Uphold the law without a mandate.
3. Uphold the mandate without the rest of the law.
It’s the Supreme Court, though interestingly, Scalia says that there is nothing unconstitutional about the mandate.
JM
See what I mean? We used to get real trolls around here. That one isn’t fit to bleach Brick Oven Bill’s sphincter.
Reality Check
@Belafon (formerly anonevent):
No, Scalia didn’t say that. Never did.
scav
Looks like Chex Mix is self-pleasuring again. Lucky Lucky thread.
Nied
@Belafon (formerly anonevent):
From skimming the ruling, it looks like they used the same “They can’t do it because they just can’t” rationale some of the lower courts used. I’m going to go out on a limb and say that there’s a good chance this will get overturned when the 11th Circuit rules en banc.
trollhattan
@JM:
Ow, my bwaaaaaain!
JM
@TenguPhule:
No, he’s changing the subject because he hasn’t been fed his talking points yet.
John O
Wasn’t the mandate something the GOP once proposed? I sure keep reading it was.
We live in a strange place.
kindness
Which Republican group will win in this scenerio?
Will it be Big Insurance which wants the mandate to pad their books? Will it be the Teahaddists who hate being told they have to buy insurance (because they think MediCare will cover them for free)?
If it had all been Single Payer, none of this would matter, but no!!!! We were forced to go the private industry route (because government always sucks, amirite?) and now it’s a pissing duel between competing Republicans.
Culture of Truth
Are death panels still legal?
Reality Check
@John O:
We never proposed that in good faith. Don’t you realize that? If we had been it would have been passed under Bush.
Hunter Gathers
@scav: Oh, leave Reality Impaired alone. He’s just tired of having things rammed down his throat, which I’m sure has absolutely nothing to do with large black cocks.
JonF
They reversed Vinson’s ruling striking down the entire law.
As for SCOTUS, Orin Kerr(hardly a progressive) thinks that SCOTUS will rule 6-3 to uphold the mandate.
dm9871
I’m a lawyer. It’s hard to explain just how outside the mainstream this kind result would have been just 5-10 year ago. I graduated law school in ’02. If you had written something like this on your 1L Con Law exam you would have gotten an F, because it’s not just a wrong view, it’s a view that ignores 60 years of precedent. To overturn the health care law is to erase the profound turn that the Supreme Court took in 1937 when it rejected the Lochner Era approach and adopted the modern/New Deal era approach.
The idea that we’re even having this conversation – and the Circuit courts are splitting on this question! – suggests just how far we’ve come in a very, very short time. The movement conservatives have all come out of the closet – even the ones on the federal bench. They smell a final victory: a return to Gilded Age America.
Q.Q. Moar
@Culture of Truth: Not just legal; mandatory.
LittlePig
@Reality Check: Wrong again, RH.
John O
@Reality Check:
LOL…well, since I believe you never propose anything in good faith, I suppose I did know that. Nothing passed under Bush but rich gets richer and poor get poorer, or blown up.
TenguPhule
Reality Impaired learned penis braille?
scav
@Hunter Gathers: Exactly, hence my emphasis on the “self-“
fhtagn
@Reality Check:
Whereas your rabble just want Israel to ascend in a ball of fire as Jeebus dives into the end zone with his blonde hair flying in the breeze as the dinosaurs cheer, right? How very pro-semitic of you.
JM
Wow, the troll doesn’t even have the right decade for the Republican proposal.
Culture of Truth
This covers Alabama, Georgia & Florida. Obama can still impose sharia law there, though.
Reality Check
@Belafon (formerly anonevent):
Scalia didn’t say that. Matthew Yglesias (LOL) intepreted something Scalia said in that way.
Alex S.
@Reality Check:
http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/how-antonin-scalia-may-save-the-individual-mandate/
So if the mandate ends up making the healthcare law more affordable it should stay.
Reality Check
@JM:
Yes I do. Republicans proposed something in the ’90s with a mandate, but we weren’t serious about it. If it was a serious proposal, we would have passed it during the Bush administration when we had control of the Congress and the Presidency.
Violet
Have the health insurance company stocks imploded yet?
askew
@MobiusKlein:
And that shows why Reid and Obama are dumb asses for not having all of these open seats filled by Dems already. Their failure to get these judges appointed will impact us for decades.
JM
@Reality Check:
Wow, still decades off, troll.
No wonder you’re on the right: you’re stupid.
fhtagn
@Reality Check:
What, no mention of Robert Bork? Your standards of trollery really are slipping. Pick up your game, boy, because these days you ain’t worth the two seconds it takes to read you, chuckle and move on to the reality-based part of the program.
LittlePig
We never proposed that in good faith.
The Reality Check motto. I love the royal ‘we’, too. A legend in his own mind.
Ian
@JM:
As much as I like troll bashing too, ad hominens are the most common logical fallacy. Perhaps we would do better ignoring the troll?
cleek
@askew:
how could they do that?
Hunter Gathers
@Reality Check: Shorter Reality Check – Universal healthcare? Fuck that. Scores and scores of dead brown people? Sign me the fuck up!
Q.Q. Moar
@Violet: No! They are surging with the news that soshulism/
fascsfacsHitler has been struck another blow by True Patriots© on the 11th circuit court.Corner Stone
@Culture of Truth:
I thought sharia law was being imposed in NJ with that one muslim judge person?
Davis X. Machina
That should read “…and the not-insane free marketer.” I met him once. His name is George. Nice guy.
But he’s it.
trollhattan
@JM:
Best watch out, somebody’s going to accuse you of bias against the stupid.
Davis X. Machina
@Alex S.: The relevant question is simply whether the means chosen are “reasonably adapted” to the attainment of a legitimate end under the commerce power.
One of the shocking things about con law is how irrational your rational relation can be and still be rational.
shortstop
We should definitely take this interesting news and make it all about the troll.
Culture of Truth
First they try it in NJ and then in America.
Bokonon
The news coverage that I’ve seen goes through the partisan background of the individual judges on the Eleventh Circuit, but completely fails to mention that OTHER FEDERAL APPEALS COURTS HAVE UPHELD THE INDIVIDUAL MANDATE.
Gee … you would think that they would mention a minor little thing like that, eh? You know, spare a line or two of the partisanship analysis? Talk about the fact that we have a split of the federal appeals courts, and that this guarantees Supreme Court review?
Nah. Details, shmetails. And it gets in the way of a good banner headline implying that the Individual Mandate has been struck down as unconstitutional. For good.
No wonder Americans are confused.
Nylund
The mandate is one of the three legs of the stool. Without it, the two legged stool will collapse. Without forcing people to pay before they get sick and with insurance companies being forced to accept sick people, the private insurance market would go bankrupt.
It may actually be the best outcome for people who still want a single-payer/medicare-for-all solution. Of course, the Supreme Court probably knows this and will rule that its ok for the gov’t to mandate that we hand over money to our for-profit corporate insurance overlords.
Personally, I wouldn’t mind seeing “Obamacare” die if it died in such a way that practically forced the gov’t come up with a single-payer solution.
Tom Q
@cleek: Come on, you know — Magic Bully Pulpit!
Culture of Truth
The court is in Atlanta. Judges probably needed to rush off to the PGA Championship.
Q.Q. Moar
@Ian: Don’t confuse insult with ad hominem. If someone was saying his argument was invalid because he’s from the trailer park, that would be an ad hominem argument, and obviously wrong. On the other hand, if I call him a syphilitic homunculus, I have not made an argument, but simply pointed out a fact.
Emma
@Nylund: I wouldn’t mind seeing “Obamacare” die if it died in such a way that practically forced the gov’t come up with a single-payer solution.
And if wishes were horses… No matter how we want it, it won’t happen. Not now, not in the middle of the crazy we have.
LittlePig
@Bokonon: I didn’t get that implication. I think you mean you ‘inferred’ it meant it was struck down, since you, the listener, came to the conclusion.
It’ll be interesting to see what the SC comes up with. I can see it going either way. I mean, insurance corporations are people, too.
NonyNony
@Ian:
At other blogs trolls are to be ignored.
At Balloon Juice they’re hunted for sport. We used to get some really fine trolls around here[*] but lately Reality Check is just about as good as they get. freD is making an attempt to try something different with trolling, but so far it’s falling pretty flat. Reality Check is mostly just a “suck on this libtards” sort of troll, which is kind of sad, but he tries hard so we pat him on the head some times and make him think he’s pissing people off.
[*] it should be said that to this day I’m STILL not certain how many of those “good trolls” were actually DougJ in a troll mask.
Violet
@dm9871:
This is hardly surprising. The Republicans want to erase every bit of the New Deal. Turning back the clock on the way the Supreme Court deals with things is a big part of that.
Judas Escargot
@Bokonon:
Again, reverse the parties and imagine how the exact same events would be reported.
“Beleaguered Dems lose two seats in historic recall election!”
“Gov. Rick Perry (D) announces Presidential run. Radical secessionist. TX has $27 Bil deficit. Unpopular in own state.”
“Dem judges rule against ACA in oddball ruling! Is this political?”
JM
Maybe he’ll accept this as non-biased?
Yes, Nixon eventually moved to an employer mandate, but his first counter-offer against single payer was an individual mandate.
Aaaaaaaaaaaaand down the memory hole it goes.
JM
@trollhattan:
I was so mean, asking a trick question like that.
Davis X. Machina
Close to the truth. Perry was Al Gore’s 1988 state campaign manager.
Q.Q. Moar
Speaking of trolls, was anybody here hanging out at Sadly, No! back in the Truth “Bookmark this libs!” era? Good times. I haven’t been hanging out here long enough to have met any of the “classic” trolls. Reality Cheat is weak sauce but that “we didn’t say it in good faith” line is golden.
askew
@cleek:
They could have done it last year when they had 60 votes. They let 1 or 2 Senators hold up almost all of Obama’s judicial nominees.
Judas Escargot
@Davis X. Machina:
Holy Carp: I did not know this.
Napoleon
@dm9871:
That decision has nothing to do with the law. It is totally unsupported under current constitutional and statutory law. But then again so was Bush V. Gore, which is why when the SC was done stealing an election they stated that that decision could not be used ever again for anything else.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@Davis X. Machina: Prior to ’94, it was OK to be a Dem in Texas. @Nylund:
Except laws don’t happen that way here. We either do nothing or a little bit at a time. If the ACA were ruled unconstitutional it would be decades before anything else was tried.
Davis X. Machina
@Judas Escargot: Yep. Might as well call him Rick “Nighthorse” Perry. Crossed over to run against and upset Jim Hightower.
Like most converts I’ve ever met, he’s a bigger pain in the ass than the real item.
Chad N Freude
@LittlePig: Royal “we”? I thought he meant that he was a member of Congress at the time.
Triassic Sands
Off Topic
I just heard a clip of Herman Cain. What I thought I heard him say was his previous comments about Mormonism were not a
“dispersion on his [Romney’s] religion…”
Did anyone hear that? Did he really say “dispersion” instead of “aspersion” or did I misunderstand what he said. (It was on a radio in the next room.)
OMG. Never mind. I just found the quote on Politico and they have it as “dispersion.”
Mitt Romney: Mormon.
Herman Cain: Moron.
No, Hermie, it wasn’t a dispersion on his religion.
kindness
@Bokonon: It goes against the media meme. Which I honestly can’t figure out any more I’m sorry to say. I knew when dubya was in office, everything he did was good & anything Democrats wanted was bad because well, dubya was the Village Idiots version of the baby Jesus come to life & giving them all personal nicknames which made them all pop tents in their pants. But with Obama, there was never any honeymoon & it immediately was portrayed as Obama bad, Teahaddists good.
Even now when Wall Street is finally starting to see that their money might actually be better spent on Democrats over the DeMint faction of American life the Media is still trying to act like we’re evil & Perry & the wankers are the real Mericuns.
Some times, I just don’t get it.
fhtagn
@Triassic Sands:
Romney: Shermanator!
Cain: Hermannator!
trollhattan
From the ruling:
Do I misremember that the “mandate” is a tax penalty on those who choose to not buy insurance, or would it result in being dragged off to an Obama Reeducation camp? Can’t anybody simply say “fuckoff” and simply pay the penalty?
I forget.
liberal
@Q.Q. Moar:
Yeah, that’s a pet peeve of mine.
Thymezone
The good news is that the court carved out the mandate, the law pretty much stands either way.
As Ezra Klein tweeted a short time ago, this means that the likely SCOTUS outcomes are either dump the mandate, or keep the whole law. Either way, ACA stays and works. The mandate is just a gadget. Its whole purpose, it seems to me, was to avoid calling the fee-for-noncompliance a tax, which it is, and then putting up a tax break for compliance. Which is what the mandate really is, it’s just not written to reveal itself properly. Which shows you how backward our legislative process is, that it would create such a Rube Goldberg contraption to avoid calling a tax, a tax.
Klein also (correctly) stated that ironically, the mandate-less law was almost exactly the scheme that Obama campaigned on in 2008 … despite lengthy useless arguments here that he had campaigned on a true Public Option setup, which he never did. That’s grist for another argument, sort of, but luckily, that argument has already been had here at length and I know of nothing that could be added to what has already been said.
Davis X. Machina
From Justice Marcus’ dissent, via Steve Benen:
Hill Dweller
The dissent from Judge Stanley Marcus, a Reagan appointee, is hilarious. He essentially calls the majority morons.
Chad N Freude
@NonyNony: I hurled many faux-troll accusations at DougJ, but he never responded. I think we need enhanced interrogation to make him ‘fess up.
Davis X. Machina
But wait — as the Shamwow guy says — there’s more!:
trollhattan
@Davis X. Machina:
It creates an interesting opening, should Goodhair get the nomination: “So, governor, when you were running Al Gore’s campaign, what was your policy advice to him on…?”
I think the deal is if he refudiates three times before the cock crows, everybody gets free breadsticks with their pizza order, or are divorced, or something.
KG
@Davis X. Machina: that’s going to be the basis of Scalia’s concurring opinion when this goes to the Supremes. I am half convinced that he might drag at least one of Thomas, Roberts, or Alito along with him. Then again, if it’s Roberts, it may be Scalia’s majority opinion
rb
@Triassic Sands: Yeah, he did say it and it was noticeable. My diagnosis is that he’s never considered how one spells “cast aspersion,” and so is hearing a “d” where the “t” is. Makes me think of the way people write “would of.” They probably go around saying “would of,” too, but you’d never know it just from listening.
Groucho48
Skimming through the decision, it looks as though the rationale the court used was…well, Congress has never mandated anything before and we assume they would have if they could have, so, that must mean they can’t.
That pretty much defines a conservative point of view.
burnspbesq
304 pages of opinions. Any of y’all even make it to page 50 before you started pontificating?
Davis X. Machina
@trollhattan: Not just any Democratic contender… but the fat, earth-toned, airplane-flying, big-house-owning Lightbulb Antichrist himself.
God may be really bad at disaster response, or play selection — ask Tim Tebow — but He does have a wicked sense of humor.
Thymezone
#119: It’s no use, Chad. He will deny, deny, deny, but I have never believed it and do not believe it now.
Hal
@Hunter Gathers:
Even shorter: “Har Har, Libruls!” Applied only to subjects in which conservatives seem to win something, anything, against Dems. Dems support not running kittens over, and Repubs do? Har, Har, Libruls. Try and save those kitties!!!
benjoya
@My Truth Hurts: perfect.
The Dangerman
@Belafon (formerly anonevent):
In this matter, my judgment is ACA is a bit of a Trojan Horse; in the end, this is the little step towards the inevitable single payer.
If the Courts rule that the mandate is unconstitutional but the rest of the law stands, single payer gets fast-tracked given the insurance companies will all race out of the market. For profit companies don’t like it when they become unprofitable.
ericblair
@Thymezone:
If there’s one thing we’re good at here, it’s bouncing the rubble, so if you missed the argument the first twenty times just wait an hour or two.
From the snippets here, it already seems like the panel got it factually wrong (you’re not compelled to purchase anything, in the same way that the mortgage interest tax deduction doesn’t mean you’re compelled to get a mortgage), it overreaches into legislative territory, and it tries to stuff a demonstrably federal issue into the states’-rights oubliette. Is that about right?
trollhattan
@Davis X. Machina:
Yeah, jeez, if Romney’s attackable as a shallow, flipflopping opportunist, what does that make Perry?
Thymezone
#92 — don’t think so. The mandate language appears to be a tortured way to avoid calling the fee a tax. If a tax is imposed and a tax break is baked in, available to anyone who buys the insurance, it’s just another tax incentive and nobody questions it, do they?
David in NY
@dm9871:
That victory they seem already to have won if you look at the income distribution statistics.
@Davis X. Machina: @Hill Dweller: Sounds like a fine dissent. Glad there was one; it may give hope for an en banc reversal. (Though this is the 11th …)
Davis X. Machina
@benjoya: Between now and age 65, relying on what, exactly? The kindness of strangers?
Thymezone
@ericblair:
Well it sounds right to me. But then I put catsup on avocados, so what the hell do I know?
Davis X. Machina
@Thymezone: The interesting and profitable part of appellate law consists of finding the difference between two identical things.
dollared
@burnspbesq: Much less the fact that this will get reheard en banc.
Elie
@Emma:
Honestly, sometimes I think folks are using the “underpants gnome” business model for arriving at single payer..
1. blow up HCR in the courts because of the mandate (hooray!)
2. ???????
3. Pass single payer health reform in 2012/2013!
Like wow… how does blowing up current health reform help make us end up with even MORE progressive health care reform: single payer. I’m all for it, but honestly am amazed that some folks think that would happen…
Napoleon
@trollhattan:
Yes it is a tax, not a mandate. The decision is 100% BS.
jl
@Reality Check:
Shorter troll: When we proposed that policy, we were cynical jackasses running a political trick, so it was OK. Ha ha ha!
Pretty much sums up the new improved GOP we see today.
Lincoln, Hiram Johnson, Robert La Follette, Teddy Roosevelt, Arthur Vandenberg, Eisenhower, Nelson Rockefeller, they all would be so proud of what has become of their party.
Davis X. Machina
@Elie:
Bully pulpit. Armtwisting. LBJ. It’s easy if you just want it bad enough. It’s so right it can’t not pass.
Culture of Truth
“The uninsured have made a decision, either consciously or by default, to direct their financial resources to some other item or need than health insurance.”
NR
Don’t worry. The same Supreme Court that gave us Citizens United will gleefully uphold the mandate, because it facilitates a massive transfer of wealth from American citizens to private corporations.
ericblair
@trollhattan:
I don’t think it’s the opportunism angle that could really hit Perry below the waterline: it’s purity. Your basic liberal or mushy-middler doesn’t tend to give a shit about it, but purity sure matters to authoritarians. Being a Dixiecrat would have been OK, since we all pretty much know what “The Democrats Left Me!” translates to. But this is Algore, the Grima Wormtongue of Nature, who he bowed down to.
Oh yeah, Algore is fat. And has a house, apparently.
David in NY
@burnspbesq:
What? You want informed pontification? You’re in the wrong country.
dollared
@dm9871: But all that Overton Window stuff is just lies!!!!!
(when I was in law school, securities fraud was actually illegal, and monopolies (at least those that pay substantial campaign contributions) had only recently been declared Natural and Just Results of the Magical Free Market)
Nied
@trollhattan:
Ayup that’s the long and the short of it. It is extra money that you pay to the IRS when you file your taxes for not engaging in a certain activity. But because the bill in question uses the word “penalty” it is an unprecedented power grab that punishes inactivity, unlike those totally legal ones that punish you for not buying a house with a mortgage (mortgage interest tax deduction), or having children (child income tax credit). Those are different, because… Socialism! Why if the government could force you to buy things, they could even force you to buy a gun!
That’s not what the founding fathers would have wanted.
jl
@Elie:
I think that single payer would the eventual outcome of overturning health care reform. But it would come about over decades, basically by expanding Medicaid and Medicare incrementally through popular outrage and political pressure as the US health care system slowly tears itself apart.
That process would take decades (no way by 2013), countless premature deaths, incalculable human suffering, and hundreds and hundreds of billions of wasted dollars.
And the resulting system might well be pretty crummy.
Not a route to single payer a sensible person would want to pursue.
Elie
@Culture of Truth:
where is that quote from and what is the point you are trying to make?
Yeah, if you are hungry, you will buy food instead of health insurance, you will put a roof over your head and other critical essentials that have to do with immediate survival. Again,what’s your point?
John O
Seems pretty clear to me that the SCOTUS will rule whichever way the HCI wants them to.
It’ll be funny to watch Scalia try to dance his way around an upholding of the ruling of the 11th.
I think it will stand with this Court.
Culture of Truth
Well, I’m sold.
Culture of Truth
Elie,
The quote is from today’s 11th Cir. opinion. I highlight it because I thought it was of interest.
Emma
@Elie: All true. I was just trying to point out that, in this political climate, even if the will existed it Congress (which it don’t), the whole thing would be impossible in our current political climate.
j
But the 6th Court of Appeals said it was OK.
http://www.kaiserhealthnews.org/Daily-Reports/2011/June/30/appeals-court-decision.aspx
srv
@jl:
This is 11-dimensional chess, Obama setting Scalia up as the tripwire to single-payer.
Grumpy Code Monkey
SCOTUS Blog has a series of essays about the constitutionality of the individual mandate pro and con, and after reading some of them I’m of the opinion that whether the mandate is constitutional or not, it’s ultimately a bad idea.
This essay is one of the first, and best sums up the concern conservatives have with the mandate:
Emphasis mine. I don’t know if that is true; there is a rational basis argument, i.e., such a mandate must be reasonable. But suppose we backslide into another 8 years of radical Republican non-governance, with a couple of appointments to SCOTUS to tip it well into the “conservative” (read Republican) sphere; what kind of bat-shit crazy mandates would be considered “reasonable” by such a court? Imagine the kinds of mandates that would be imposed on women seeking abortions; make the right economic and public welfare arguments, and you’d have a de facto ban on abortion by imposing procedural hurdles so high that most women would be discouraged from the attempt, but that a bunch of old white men would find perfectly “reasonable”.
The question we have to ask ourselves when doing stuff like this is, What Would Sarah Palin Do (or, What Would A Tea-Party Congress Do) with the same power?
I’m not a federalist or small-government conservative by any means, but I think this concern is well-founded. The point was made here several days ago wrt procedure in Congress – any novel procedures Democrats come up with to break a logjam, the Republicans embrace and exploit to create new ones.
Culture of Truth
Elie
@jl:
absolutely, jl…. emphasis needs to be put on the suffering of folks till then… and the astronomic rise in the segment of the economy allocated to healthcare — It will go from a 18% monster to 20%, gobbling up opportunity for investment in other sectors, but not providing more coverage to the people who need it — just exacerbating the current income disparity by making rich providers richer…
Boy, we are in an ugly period. But a very necessary one. I do not welcome the painful arguents and turmoil, but there was no way that any change would happen in anything without getting beaten up ourselves a bit. Laying siege to a well fortified castle takes a long time — to anyone who reads history… No one comes out of the castle voluntarily and the invaders must rely on a combination of occasional direct assaults, attempts at “sneaking in” ala trojan horse, and finally, out enduring the hold outs..
Not sure my anology is very good, but it boild down to, “shit, this is really hard but we just have to keep at it, take our set backs with toughness and take pleasure and encouragement from our victories.”
Lurker
@cintibud:
It’s not the insurers who get screwed. It’s the insured.
Four states already ban discrimination against preexisting conditions for individuals without mandating coverage for those individuals — Maine, New York, New Jersey and Vermont. The insurers in those states just pass the cost of treating their sicker pools along in the form of higher premiums.
As a person who’s had three rejections from three different insurers for individual coverage, though, I won’t complain too much about the cost of health insurance if I can get it.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@Groucho48: Except, as I noted earlier, Congress has been mandating things since the Constitution was passed.
Elie
@Emma:
I understood that from your comment…
@Culture of Truth:
Yes, it was “of interest”. I guess what I was asking YOU was what you thought was of interest, or the point of it..
nevermind
ericblair
@Culture of Truth:
That makes things even stupider. “The uninsured have made a decision, either consciously or by default, to direct their financial resources to some other item or need than health insurance.”: how about the zillions of people who were flat-out denied coverage, who couldn’t get it at any price? And hey, wasn’t the “mandate” essentially a quid-pro-quo for making it possible for these people to actually buy insurance at all?
So isn’t this completely fucking backwards? I’m getting just a whiff of an idea that this is more than a little bit of outcome-based reasoning here.
Maude
@Culture of Truth:
151
That just made me laugh. Thanks.
Elie
there is no escaping that while the insurance mandate puts dough in the pockets of insurance companies, that rescinding HCR will explode health sector costs for private companies already struggling in the current economy. Holding aside Medicare and Medicaid, which have their own impacts, the benefit plans for private companies are squirming over the costs. If the mandate is blown up, costs go up astronomically, even if some folks are happy to do away with HCR. They are not going to blow this up — no one in the private sector or the insurance industry is going to allow it…
Sly
@The Dangerman:
This might be a technical distinction coming close to splitting hairs, but the shareholders of for-profit companies don’t like it when the companies they’ve invested in become unprofitable.
Basically, if the mandate gets overturned, you’ll see a sell off on health insurance stocks. If nothing happens on the legislative front, then the companies go bankrupt and are liquidated due to a massive loss in equity. Managed care corporations are next, followed by the non-profits. Unless or until Congress passed some massive Health Insurance Tax Credit to provide enough incentive to not be a free rider, private health insurance would end in the United States within a year or two, and do so in a way that is maximally disruptive to the broader economy.
Under normal circumstances (see: U.S. Political Culture, ca. 1870-2010), I would say that Congress would pass such a credit quickly rather than risk the lives and welfare of millions.
jl
The health care reform plan won’t work without a mandate, and will fall apart, more quickly than the US private health care system will.
The insured, insurance companies and the government will end up paying through the nose for sick people’s treatment, and there will be huge fight over who pays the bills.
If the mandate goes, the rest may stay in law, but in reality, the lack of a mandate will trigger big changes in the reform within a few years. Either repeal the whole thing, or move further ahead with better reform. Or given political gridlock, a cost shifting and bill stiffing festival without precedent in US history.
Culture of Truth
Reading down into the opinion, the court is mad because the law is “breathtaking” in its scope but then starts whining that illegal aliens and poor people are not covered.
Elie,
I thought it was interesting that the court seems to think people have the financial means to buy health insurance but choose not to. It’s all over the opinion.
Davis X. Machina
@Culture of Truth: They’re consuming health care. They entered the market when they were born. If they’re hit by a bus, and enter an ER uninsured, they’re stabilized. Someone pays. It’s a system.
Even if I decide to drive to Boston, and not use the Maine Turnpike, just on side roads and state highways, I still pay. Even in my hypothetical no-gas-tax electric car. Because the roads are policed — from a different revenue stream. And plowed — from a different revenue stream. And lit — from a different revenue stream
There’s a solipsistic, atomistic state of individualism that exists only in philosophy classes — and blog posts.
Thymezone
The court has an interesting sense of humor. “The uninsured have made a decision … to avoid taking responsibility for their own healthcare by frittering away the money they should have spent on insurance, thereby making their need for care a public burden owing to a compassionate system that will often provide care even though the person needing the care cannot pay for it. The court finds that shirking responsibility and screwing the rest of society is inherently congruent with the intent of the Constitution. After all, the same general principle of screwing society is clearly acceptable for rich people, therefore, the court cannot find that it is not also acceptable for poor people.”
Thymezone
@Davis X. Machina:
Ah, well it all makes sense then. What’s good for the goose is bad for the goose, and vice versa.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@Grumpy Code Monkey: It’s a slippery-slope argument, which fails unless it can be logically shown to lead to the outcome described. The health insurance mandate – which is actually just a tax on you if you don’t join – passes most tests because people join the health care system by being born. Thus, Congress has an interest in having everyone participate in one way or another. As I’ve said before, it’s not the first time Congress has mandated something, or even something in health care.
jl
Another issue is that this ruling is from the eleventh circuit, which is in the middle of southern crazy land
United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Court_of_Appeals_for_the_Eleventh_Circuit
Napoleon
@Culture of Truth:
Does it say that in that opinion?
If so I will call BS. Even if the flood insurance law itself does not call for it if you are getting a loan from any bank secured by real estate you must get coverage if you are in a flood zone to get coverage.
How many people buy real estate out of pocket. They are just making that up.
Davis X. Machina
@Thymezone: The classic definition of a lawyer is, of course, the fellow who eggs two other fellows to strip for a fight and then steals both their clothes.
Chris
@David in NY:
But the middle and working classes still have their Social Security and Medicare, the poor still have Medicaid and food stamps, and while regulations and workers’ rights have taken a lot of hits, there’s still a lot of stuff there that just wasn’t during the Gilded Age.
Conservative elites won’t be happy until we’re reduced to absolute dependence on no one but them. Those on our side interested in psychology have often suggested that it’s not about wealth (comparative or absolute) so much as control. And “respect.” Very important, the respect.
Villago Delenda Est
@Thymezone:
The uninsured, with their warped sense of priorities, like feeding the kids and keeping a roof over their heads, instead of financing the new red Maseratis of Health “Insurance” executives, deserve to die from lack of health care.
I think that pretty much sums up the court’s sensibility here.
Chad N Freude
@Culture of Truth:
Christian Scientists, I suppose, and a few other minuscule sects. So I guess it’s really an infringement on freedom of religion.
jl
Now, if Congress can regulate river boat steam boilers because of interstate commerce, then by the Slippery Slope, they can do anything.
Take a steam boat, do you know where it’s going? Do you know whether it is crossing state lines for commerce? No you do not. Maybe it is just shuttling between Baton Rouge and New Orleans.
And what’s a steam boiler? First it’s river boat steam boilers, then them new fangled rail road steam engines, then it will be big gummint goons knocking down our doors and taking our tea kettles.
If Congress can regulate river boat steam ship boilers, then the Constitution means nothing, and our FREEDOM will be lost before this country is a hundred years old.
Thymezone
@Davis X. Machina:
Yes. And a lawyer is a fellow who, seeing you drowning in the river, will throw you both ends of the same rope.
Napoleon
@Chad N Freude:
I thought the law already had an out for people like that.
jl
@Villago Delenda Est: Except malnutrition and exposure will lead to medical expenditures.
The non rich are such parasitical nuisances, always scheming to get some freebies. I doubt it is unconstitutional to outlaw them. I say let the eleventh circuit decide.
Groucho48
@Belafon
Well, I was paraphrasing the decision. They claim Congress has never mandated the purchase of a product provided by private business. They go on to talk about Federal flood insurance and what a failure it is, because no one buys it because they know the Feds will declare a disaster and they will get relief. Their point being that, if Congress doesn’t mandate the purchase of flood insurance, it must be because it is unconstitutional. Even though they go on to say it is mostly politics and not wanting to upset voters as the reason for Congress not to mandate flood insurance.
Not a very coherent discussion. I’m not a lawyer or anything but I have read a fair number of decisions and I’ve noticed that shaky decisions often go on at great length about tangentialities, hoping to hide the poor decision in a cloud of sidetracks.
FlipYrWhig
@jl:
You’d think, although to this point the brunt of popular outrage has been vociferously _against_ the idea that more people should get to benefit from those programs. Crab, bucket, some assembly required.
Culture of Truth
Also our high courts:
Thymezone
@Chad N Freude:
Which doesn’t make a lot of sense, since they seem to be jailing parents who let their kids die without appropriate real healthcare in the face of illness or injury, deciding instead to pray on it, or send the kid to a witchdo … er, Christian Science practitioner.
Davis X. Machina
@Thymezone: I call that generous — why, I would only throw you one end, and I’d still have at least partial ownership of the rope after all that.
ericblair
@Grumpy Code Monkey:
If this is the best argument conservatives have got, it’s monumentally stupid.
First of all, after the Bush era conservatives can shut the fuck up about worrying about power grabs. This sounds like an attempt to inject the courts into political matters to tie Congress’ hands for policy outcomes, making them into the biggest activist courts in American history. If I were a cynic, I’d note that encouraging the increasingly conservative courts to take on new power seemed to happen just when the conservatives lost executive and legislative power.
Also, yes, Congress can pass whatever “mandates” it damn pleases, subject to being voted out of power and having the mandates overturned by the courts because they violate the Constitution in a specific way. A poll tax could be structured as a mandate, but its unconstitutionality has nothing to do with it being a mandate and everything to do with it interfering with the right to vote. Mandates sure as hell are interfering with abortion services, but are fought by the Constitutional right to privacy and not by calling all mandates bad.
Culture of Truth
@Napoleon: Yes, they say that about flood insurance.
Uncle Clarence Thomas
.
.
This is all going to be so much easier when I take my rightful position as Super Soul Justice of the Super Supreme Court.
.
Balloonemos, pay heed to my mighty gavel – I have pre-judged this issue and find that the only health care bill which can pass any kind of Constitutional Mustard is President Obama’s imminent Single Payer Plan.
.
.
NR
@Thymezone:
Yeah, “frittering away” their money on such frivolous things like “food” and “rent.” Why don’t these people have their priorities in order?
jurassicpork
Dear Phil Hinkle:
I have read with some consternation your recent difficulties regarding a barely-legal male hooker of 18…
jl
The oppressive thumb of Nobama political correctness prevents me from advocating anything, but I will tell you what kind of poor people do not need to participate in the medical care market: dead poor people, that’s who.
There you go. Simple answers to simple questions.
The brave Rush dares to say this, but who else, I ask you?
Even the majority of this eleventh circuit panel is too timid to stand and speak the truth.
We used to be a free country, now look at it.
sparky
i must disagree with this assertion on a couple of grounds. first, it is a regurgitation of what law teachers teach not what the state of the law is. second, the writer has apparently not even bothered to skim the decision, because it spends a lot more time on those decisions than is spent in any Con Law class, as the treatment of Wickard demonstrates. finally, and relatedly, it ignores recent SCt decisions on this issue. Lopez, Morrison and their ilk don’t mean that much, but they do mean something, and that something is locating the outer limit of Commerce Clause power. now, we can disagree with where that point may lie, but there is, somewhere, a point beyond which Congress cannot go, notwithstanding the winks and nods of bored Con law teachers. i am significantly to the left of most of the commentators here* yet i cannot say that this decision is incorrect. if the mandate is constitutional, it’s not exactly clear what Congress could NOT order citizens to do.
as an aside, the legal dispute has nothing to do with the arguments about the mandate, insurance or anything related, so all this talk about legs of a stool is irrelevant to the Constitutional question. in other words, just because something is a good idea doesn’t mean it is possible.
*i thought, and still believe, that the ACA was a (edit: mostly) loathsome sellout to the insurance-medical-pharma industrial complex. but if the regulatory aspects of the act stay and the mandate goes, that’s fine with me.
Mitch Guthman
If I were Obama, I don’t think I would bother to appeal this. I would just declare victory and begin to implement the good portions of the law and let the private insurance companies, for whose benefit the mandate was created, die the slow, lingering death they so richly deserve.
trollhattan
@ericblair:
He might could “pray back” part of his sullied purity (see, also, too: Palin, Bristol’s restored chastity) by noting, “Hey, I executed an innocent guy.”
That’ll reel some of ’em in.
NR
@ericblair:
So then what, in your opinion, are the limits of Congress’ power to mandate citizens giving money to private corporations? Could Congress mandate that everyone has to buy their groceries at Wal-Mart? Could they mandate that everyone must purchase a house? Or a car? Or an American flag? What are the limits?
jl
@FlipYrWhig: But your point is precisely why it will take decades. The disintegration of the private US health care system will eventually touch everyone except the very rich.
As various pieces of the private system rot and fall off, or throw a Johnson rod and blow up, more and more of the right kind of people will get hurt, not those worthless poor (brown) people on the wrong side of the tracks.
So, I would predict episodes of crisis and outrage where a critical mass of right thinking good (white) people are outraged (because when they are hurt thee is a big problem to be solved right now!) put enough pressure to expand some public insurance expansion, or some public tax credit or subsidy scheme. And pretty soon, the US gummint is essentially running the whole thing.
That is why it will take decades, and mass premature death, suffering and wasted money.
Thymezone
@NR:
If they could refuse groceries and then go to an Emergency Fast Food outlet and get hamburgers which the rest of us would have to pay for, they would. But they can’t, so they give up medical care access. Besides, people who can’t afford any expenditure for healthcare have other options like Medicaid.
Oh, wait.
Now as for food, rent or insurance … sure, as long as we hold it to be okay for people to be paid a wage that doesn’t permit all three to be affordable to the working population. Which is sort of the whole point of ACA, isn’t it? To cover those people? So it looks like business has just successfully lobbied what I call the Bob and Ray solution. This comedy team did a sketch about a guy who runs a paper clip factory, where the clips are made by hand. The clip factory owner is asked, surely you can’t pay your workers much to make paper clips by hand, since they are sold so cheaply? Oh, we don’t pay them much, says the owner, we just encourage them to forage for food.
Southern Beale
Yet another failed Teabagger rally, only 30 people show up… this time in Orlando, FL.
General Stuck
Correct me if I’m wrong, BJ lawyers with a brane. But if a decision like this were to stand, then it would put in doubt the rationale for extracting payment for every citizen that works, the FICA tax to purchase the government version of insurance for old age. SS and medicare.
jl
@NR: Maybe you should read the comment above on the weaknesses of carelessly applied slippery slope arguments.
Right now it is a fact that health care and insurance is provided by giant corporations that operate across state lines. So, there you go, interstate commerce. It is fact that anyone has a very high probability of needing medical care at some time, and meeting requirements for receiving uncompensated care.
So, what do you propose? Does congress have the power to dictate no company can operate in the health insurance or medical care market across state lines? Does Congress have the power to preempt all state laws that require uncompensated medical care for anyone meeting certain criteria (usually, death or permanent disability without care)?
Simply yelling ‘slippery slope’ over and over again is pretty weak tea in the face of that reality.
different church-lady
@Nylund:
You say that like it’s a bad thing.
Napoleon
@General Stuck:
and Civil Rights, Family Leave Act, and a bunch of others potentially.
different church-lady
@burnspbesq:
I can’t quite decide if this is an example of not understanding how the internet works, or a case of understanding it far too well.
ericblair
@NR:
If you could make it a matter to do with federal commerce, yes. Congress could pass, and has passed, all sorts of stupid laws, and our system relies on voters kicking their idiot asses out of power next election and undoing the damage. Otherwise, you’re asking the unelected federal judicial branch to play dad for Congress without explicit constitutional authority.
The conservatives can’t find any clear constitutional authority to ban mandates: they’ve been used before without a peep, and the arguments we’ve just seen come down from the courts seem to be a bunch of half-assed handwaving and factual errors. If they want mandates to be unconstitutional they can damn well try to get an amendment passed. Good luck with that.
jl
As an example of how badly the private US health care system is failing, I heard a radio news report that the most important factor in recent increases in emergency room utilization is referrals from doctors.
Doctors, especially those working for large medical groups and HMOs, no longer have time to deal with any non routine visit. So, the doctors themselves will refer patients seeing them at a doctor visit to the emergency room.
Pathetic.
That is the kind of nonsense that will touch nice middle class white people, and will produce pressure to expand government funding and provision of care, without reform. But, as I said before, that expansion will be a very long expensive and deadly process.
Edit: one doctor interviewed for the report said that he simply was no longer permitted to spend time with a sick patient who could not be fit into a pre arranged protocol.
But of course, staying with the current US system will mean no one will get between you and your doctor, right?
chopper
@eemom:
exactly. a split circuit pretty much guarantees a look by the scotus.
Nied
@NR:
Possibly, though specifying who you buy from is different than specifying you buy a certain product (such as a gun, or a house, or health insurance). Congress has done the latter (through the Militia act of 1792, the Mortgage interest Tax deduction, and the Affordable Care Act) but to my knowledge they have yet to do the former.
They already have using essentially the same enforcement mechanism (preferential tax treatment) as in the ACA.
different church-lady
Not that I’m defending the mandate, but y’all seem to be missing a fundamental element of all of this: if your income sucks you’re not on the hook for the tax penalty. So the discussion about whether the poor should spend their money on food or insurance is moot.
moe99
@My Truth Hurts:
Just don’t get diagnosed with cancer before you reach Medicare eligibility, which should be pushed up to 70 or so in a few years.
sparky
@General Stuck: not so. as even this decision observes, taxes and other enforced citizenship requirements are not at issue and fall within established Commerce Clause power. (“Congress has the power to regulate commerce…”). the income tax came about through the 16th amendment to the constitution. here, the issue is rather narrow: not whether Congress has broad power–there is no dispute that it does, even among conservatives–but rather whether that power encompasses the mandate. you don’t have to be a conservative to question whether it does.*
*arguably, all of these kinds of debates are irrelevant given the triumph of the national security state. some of us are still fond of the illusion that laws still have some meaning. that said, that the law with meaning is the Commerce Clause and not the Bill of Rights is shameful.
Chad N Freude
@Napoleon: Maybe it does, but the snark content remains high.
Raven (formerly stuckinred)
I have never met Napoleon
But I plan to find the time
‘Cause he looks so fine upon that hill
They tell me he was lonely, he’s lonely still
Those days are gone forever
Over a long time ago, oh yeah
shortstop
@burnspbesq: Burns, you’ve done it again: immediately put the kibosh on any interest anyone previously had in hearing your own take on this. That tinkling, clattering sound you hear is the verbal china again flying hither and yon upon your taurine entrance.
@Elie: An unshakable belief, based on an ability to completely tune out the past 20 years, that if the cause is just and sensible it will prevail? For my money, the “If things get worse, everyone will wake up and smell the coffee!” stuff is the most dangerous viewpoint we can hold; it shows a sad lack of imagination along with an inexcusable willingness to let the most vulnerable take unnecessary risks.
Hunter Gathers
@different church-lady: Actually, the IRS cannot go after anybody who does not pay the penalty. Go here. Relevant part starts at about 2:30.
shortstop
@jurassicpork: One reader’s consternation is another’s deep enjoyment. I laughed so hard the dog gave me the Raised Eyebrow Face of Great Alarm.
sparky
@Nied: i don’t know whether you are confused, sloppy or disingenuous but preferential tax treatment is NOT compulsion. and a requirement that members of the militia arm themselves in 1792 is somehow a valid predecessor for the ACA mandate doesn’t pass the laugh test.
Davis X. Machina
Scott Lemieux of Lawyers, Guns, and Money wrote on the slippery-slope arguments raised against the PPACA here, and the activity-inactivity distinction among others here.
beergoggles
@Q.Q. Moar:
That the MSM will refuse to run because it’s too vitriolic or some other bullshit excuse.
sb
@beergoggles: Yep.
Nied
@sparky:
But the mandate comes about because of congresses power to levy income taxes since all it is is an extra tax you pay to the IRS for not getting insurance. There are all kinds of extra taxes that an individual can pay for failing to engage in certain economic activities, from not buying a house with a mortgage (mortgage interest tax deduction), to not purchasing solar panels for that house (home energy tax deductions in the ARRA), hell the government even mandates that you have children! (child tax credit.) That these penalties are labeled “deductions” or “credits” instead of a “penalty” like in the ACA does little to change the fact that you pay extra to the IRS when you fail to engage in them.
General Stuck
The wingers want this law to die in a big and existential way for their belief system and threats to their birthright to rule this nation. I wouldn’t count on any kind of precedent to save the day. I think they are quit serious about this, and utterly inconsolable about it.
One more carrot tossed into the dystopia stew.
Time to walk the dog .
JGabriel
@chopper:
Of course. The administration wants SCOTUS to look at it, eventually, at some point after 2014.
They’d like to have it as fully implemented as possible first, so that people will have experienced its benefits and overturning it will be extremely unpopular.
.
Nied
@sparky:
Oh please do tell how paying more on your taxes for failing to buy a house is different than paying more on your taxes for failing to buy Health Insurance.
Again the government mandated that all citizens between the ages of 18 and 45 buy a commercial product, do tell what the difference is here.
Uncle Clarence Thomas
.
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@JGabriel:
Just curious, has anyone calculated the number of unnecessary deaths that will occur in the meantime by delaying full implementation?
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ChrisNYC
I’m a lawyer. I admit I fell for the inactivity red herring for a while. But it’s ludicrous. No one can decide not to consume healthcare. The individual plaintiffs in the challenges to the HCR (in the 4th Circuit) never even bothered to argue that they would. That’s the activity. That’s what’s being regulated — the mandate is just a requirement that you pay for what you inevitably will consume. It’s also a perfectly reasonable and easily applied bound on CC power.
Sort of delicious that our valiant conservatives are loudly demanding that they get shit for free.
Kane
Does this mean that Grandma is safe from the death panels?
jake the snake
@Ian:
Why is saying that RC lives in a trailer park an ad hominem?
I once lived in a trailer park. Couldn’t afford a double wide though.
different church-lady
@ChrisNYC:
Of course they can. It’s the rest of society that chooses to ignore that choice.
But in the end, what you’re saying is simply locking into the falsehood that is driving up health care costs: the idea that private insurance is the only way health care can be paid for.
Nobody’s really arguing about whether health care will be consumed. They’re arguing about how it will be paid for.
danimal
ACA is becoming this generation’s abortion issue: something the GOP spends incredible amounts of time attacking, with the knowledge that the actual bill will safely remain law. This appellate court ruling means the SCOTUS will get a crack at ACA, as almost everyone anticipated.
My big question: what happens if the GOP dog catches the ACA car? What will they do? I seem to remember the ‘repeal and replace’ slogan all the way back in 2010, but I haven’t seen a damned thing remotely resembling a replacement bill in 2011.
ChrisNYC
@different church-lady: I’m afraid you’re not right, as far as the constitutional question goes.
The issue is whether Congress, under Article I section 8, which allows it to regulate interstate commerce, can require people to buy health insurance. The argument against, which is the red herring, is that when people choose not to be insured (whether the insurance is publicly or privately provided is irrelevant), they are choosing *not* to put themselves into the “stream of interstate commerce.” Therefore, the argument goes, they are outside of Congress’ power to regulate.
This argument is a red herring because the moment that people enter the stream of interstate commerce is when they consume healthcare. At that moment, they are engaging in activity which, under the Constitution, is properly regulated by Congress. In the HCR bill, Congress made the decision that the way to regulate healthcare was by mandating insurance coverage (relying on the necessary and proper clause). That is a decision that is well within its powers to make.
This is the fundamental issue in these cases. You can watch the oral arguments on C-Span. The 4th Circuit arguments are particularly good.
Again, the plaintiffs in these cases never argued that they would not consume healthcare. It doesn’t pass the laugh test. At the very least, no person can make that “choice” if, for example, they are hit by a car and knocked unconscious. They will be taken to the hospital and will consume healthcare. It’s just an impossible position to assume. That’s why the argument wasn’t made.
General Stuck
@danimal:
You missed it then, I think it was one page scribbled in crayon, The Tax Cut For Health Care Reform Act
lllphd
@MobiusKlein:
it was just the 3 judge panel. as was the other circuit court that ruled against its validity.
my strong suspicion is that the supremes will send any of these back to the courts to be heard en banc before they wade in on it. there is simply too much precedent (60 years) they’d have to overturn….
woopsie. oh right. they overturned a century of precedent in order to justify citizens united.
channeling emily latella here: nevermind
NR
@Nied:
Except you’re wrong. The Militia Act of 1792 did not mandate the purchase of a firearm, but rather only that men “provide themselves with one.” Making their own gun (or having a friend do so), for example, would have been a perfectly acceptable alternative.
So no, the Militia Act of 1792 is not the same thing as the Democratic party using the power of government to force people to support an industry that takes 20 cents out of every dollar while adding no value.
different church-lady
@ChrisNYC: I go back to what I said earlier: being injured and seeking medical care only puts you in the path of interstate commerce IF one makes an inextricable link between insurance and health care. I, for one, do not adhere to that link.
Please keep in mind that my comments here are not directed at the question of what is constitutional, nor at the specific case being argued in front of the court. They are entirely philosophical.
lllphd
@jheartney:
the mandate wasn’t put in just to satisfy the insurance companies, tho lord knows they loved it.
it was actually put in because it will otherwise not work. you have to get everyone signed up and investing in the pool for there to be enough for those who need it to draw from it.
this is the only way it worked in MA, where i live. it’s a ‘workable’ solution, but only in the sense of staving off the inevitable need for universal healthcare. there is simply no way to keep health costs down without that ultimate solution, and that is what’s driving all the economic nightmare, at both the governmental and the middle class household levels.
second of course to the freakin’ military vacuum hose job.
Jenny
This is Great News for FDL!
ChrisNYC
@different church-lady: No. Healthcare is interstate commerce — Medicare? Medicaid? Those are healthcare programs and are regulated by Congress. Seeking healthcare puts you into interstate commerce and makes you subject to federal regulation.
There is no assumption of an “inextricable link” between insurance and healthcare. Congress is allowed to choose the means of regulation of healthcare. They chose here — insurance. They could just as well have chosen mandatory health savings accounts (self-insurance). Or single payer. Courts have no business deciding how Congress exercises power that it is granted in the Constitution. That’s why the dissenting judge on this opinion said the 11th Circuit was overstepping its bounds because it simply didn’t like the means that Congress chose.
I’m not sure how you get around the Constitutional issue when we’re talking about Congressional power, which is what these cases are about.
different church-lady
@lllphd:
danimal
@General Stuck:
Well, I’m glad it’s less than 3 pages. President Cain will be able to sign it with a clean conscience.
ChrisNYC
@different church-lady: Just one more thing — I see what you’re saying about not agreeing with Congress’ decision to mandate health insurance. But the remedy for that is to vote your legislators out. (Cold comfort, I imagine.) Courts can’t come in and say, “We don’t like this *policy* decision so we’re going to call this law unconstitutional.” Which is what happened today.
different church-lady
@ChrisNYC: I go to the doctor with a sprained foot. The doctor fixes me up. I pay him. I don’t have insurance. The doctor is in my own state. How the freak does this involve interstate commerce?
Jenny
@NR:
So you oppose government forcing people to carry auto insurance from an industry that takes 20 cents out of every dollar?
Now some people push the unrealistic retort, “no one has to drive.” To that I’ll add an equally unrealistic reply, no one has to live in the United States.
different church-lady
@Jenny: Not that I am in any way inclined to defend NR, but…
Auto insurance is a poor analogy, and everyone misses why: auto insurance is
designedmade compulsory to protect others from injury and damage your car might do to them. Not to protect you from hurting yourself.(Edited to be a bit more accurate.)
Jenny
@different church-lady: This isn’t about interstate commerce. It’s about the Necessary and Proper clause.
different church-lady
@ChrisNYC: We might be accidentally talking past each other a bit. Let me see if I can add some clarity to my position:
1) I don’t care for the mandate, true. Not one little bit.
2) I am not in a good position to say whether it’s constitutional or not. (I could do what nearly everyone else in the world does, which is to pull a bullshit argument about law based on my own emotions out of my ass, but that’s not how I roll.)
3) I think it’s entirely possible that today’s decision doesn’t hold water on a constitutional level.
4) My initial reply to your comment was on the basis of whether it made sense from a practical level, not on a legal level.
In other words, what you’re saying might make sense in the context of this case, but not outside of it. And for me vice versa.
different church-lady
@Jenny: Well, you’ll have to take that up with ChrisNYC, since he’s the one who’s asserting it is.
ChrisNYC
@different church-lady: Your doctor, every doctor is engaged in interstate commerce. Does she buy medical equipment, anaesthetics, drugs, bandaids from out of state? He or she is a provider in a nationwide industry, engaging in interstate commerce, subject to federal regs. You pay your doctor or accept care from your doctor, you too are in interstate commerce.
ChrisNYC
@Jenny: Well, “necessary and proper” to the power to regulate interstate commerce.
The n&p clause is part of Article I, Section 8. It says, “Clause 18: To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers,” One of those foregoing powers is the power to regulate interstate commerce.
You can’t get to n&p without grappling with interstate commerce. N&P is not a freestanding power.
Omnes Omnibus
@different church-lady: Where were your pain killers made? The tape the doctor used, produced locally? And on, and on….
different church-lady
@ChrisNYC: So basically what you’re asserting is that nearly every financial transaction that takes place in modern society amounts to interstate commerce? When someone purchases a locally grown potato, it’s interstate commerce because the wood the farm stand is made out of came from another state?
different church-lady
@Omnes Omnibus:
Probably in Sweden. Which just makes it all the more interesting…
ChrisNYC
@different church-lady: But, the same argument applies with the mandate. The point of the mandate is to lower healthcare costs for everyone because insurance is cheaper than out of pocket payment. When people go uninsured by choice, someone pays for their care, just not them. They’re free riders who slough off the cost of their care to their neighbors. So, if that’s persuasive to you, then maybe you can love the mandate!
Jenny
@different church-lady:
You’re incorrect. Mandatory insurance is designed in part to protect yourself from injury and damage.
If you fall into an accident (say you tire blows and you drive into a tree), then you need insurance to protect youreself.
Moreover, if you are involved in a hit and run accident, and the perpetrator is never found, you use your own insurance to cover the costs of injury and damage.
By mandating auto insurance, you order people to protect themselves, as well as pooling risks and distributing the costs evenly.
different church-lady
@ChrisNYC: That is an extremely abstract stretch of the words “injury and damage to others.”
I also refer you to my “pop quiz” about how the law is working in Massachusetts.
I have a healthy suspicion that the “free riders” point-of-view is driving a heck of a lot of the contortions we see regarding the legalities. People with insurance simply don’t want to admit that they’re resentful, even though there’s no concrete evidence the cost of their own care will go down a dime.
Omnes Omnibus
@different church-lady: And were they transported across state lines? Hell, once international commerce enters the picture there is no question of Congress’s ability to regulate.
If the Supremes want to strike the law down they can; they will find the justification. OTOH I think the weight of 70 odd years of Commerce Clause jurisprudence goes toward upholding this. Moreover, I think that, to the extent that the reactionaries on the Court are interested in watering down this interpretation of the Commerce clause, they want to do it gradually without explicitly overturning any seminal cases. This is not the kind of case where they want to make waves. This is simply my opinion, based on experience as a lawyer and years of watching Courts in action. YMMV.
Elie
@General Stuck:
LOL! Another side grabber…
Can they even do crayon? Or better yet, make words?
So much energy to prevent something good and necessary from helping people… why oh why….Think of how that energy could be spent instead..
ChrisNYC
@different church-lady: Yeah, in effect. One of the landmark cases is Wickard, which controversially went even farther:
That’s the conservative boogy man — the scary scary black helicopter powers under the Commerce Clause. It does have bounds though and I’d argue that HCR maps out pretty reasonable bounds — very few things are like healthcare. Wickard has been chipped away over the last 30 years. But, if you’re a liberal then you’ve gotta deal with or at least make peace with the Commerce Clause. It’s the heart of the modern US and provides a lot of the basis for our modern FDR-created safety net, civil rights legislation, etc.
ETA: Paragraph starting with “The Supreme Court, interpreting” should be block quoted too.
different church-lady
@Jenny:
Just to show you I’m honest, I’m going to leave the wrong thing I just typed in place, and then correct myself:
WRONG:Hmmm… then you might want to take that up with Commonwealth of Massachusetts, a place where you are not compelled to carry audio insurance for your own vehicle or injury. Those coverages are optional.
CORRECT: Actually, checking my own policy just now I see that there is a personal injury protection line. It amounts to about one-eight of the total of all compulsory insurance.
I’ll also note that in the case of Massachusetts, rates are set by the state, which make compulsory purchase a bit more palatable.
Analogies base on car insurance are further complicated by the fact that laws differ from state to state.
Omnes Omnibus
@ChrisNYC: I think the Commerce Clause as justification for the modern welfare state or anything Congress does not make a lot of sense to non-lawyers. Nevertheless, it is what it is.
Judas Escargot
@NR:
I could (in theory) start a new HMO, appoint myself CEO and provide myself with health insurance as part of my benefits package. Or my best buddy, who has his own HMO, could grant me insurance in exchange for mowing his lawn or something.
These scenarios sound absurd, but only because creating an HMO is extremely expensive. Beyond that, the principle is exactly the same.
I still see no difference.
different church-lady
@Omnes Omnibus:
I think I may have just unintentionally provided proof of that.
ChrisNYC
@different church-lady: It’s not really. Car insurance. Mandatory hurricane insurance in Florida. The point of these things is not paternalism. It’s to make sure that one person’s irresponsibility does not screw other people. This is the idea of a commons, a public sphere where we are not all rugged individualists who watch out for “our own” and say, “the rest can go to hell.” Geez, anti-littering rules. I mean, these impositions on “liberty” are part of the price of living in a decent society.
Was Wickard’s desire to grow his own wheat a more important end than ameliorating the effects of the Depression on all the other wheat farmers? Why does he have a right to do that?
ChrisNYC
@Omnes Omnibus: I see your point. But I do think it’s worth talking about anyway. It’s so much at the heart of the eternal red blue battle and I want liberals/Dems to stand up and argue for it, rather than shrink away, ashamed of “big government.”
NR
@Judas Escargot:
Except that the health insurance law lays out what constitues “minimum essential coverage.” Your own personal HMO wouldn’t qualify.
So no, it’s not the same.
NR
@Jenny: This argument is so absurd on its face that it doesn’t pass the laugh test.
Omnes Omnibus
@ChrisNYC: I don’t disagree, but I think it is something that can end up as a sticking point in conversations. Lawyers, even those who do not agree with the post-1930s interpretation of the Commerce Clause, understand its centrality. Non-lawyers, even those who are well read and knowledgeable, do not necessarily grasp this. It can require some conversational groundwork before a reasonable discussion can take place.
Davis X. Machina
Don’t purchase. Take the hit on your taxes. The initial annual penalty is $95, or up to 1% of income, whichever is greater.
Exemptions will be granted for financial hardship, religious objections, American Indians, those without coverage for less than three months, undocumented immigrants, incarcerated individuals, those for whom the lowest cost plan option exceeds 8% of an individual’s income, and those with incomes below the tax filing threshold (in 2009 the threshold for taxpayers under age 65 was $9,350 for singles and $18,700 for couples).
Jenny
@different church-lady:
And those rates are obviously “influenced” (wink, wink) by insurance lobbyist.
But to the earlier point, even if you’re in a state where you’re only required to buy insurance to compensate for injury and damages to others, you’re still being protected A) financially: from having assets depleted and wages garnished if you’re responsible in an accident, and B) by forcing others to carry reciprical insurance to compensate you, when someone injures you or damages your property.
But putting aside all the analytical points of coverage, I’ve never heard of a blogger complain over being forced to buy auto coverage from a hated for-profit insurance company, as opposed to a non-profit government auto plan.
And if the auto mandate was repealed, the overwhelming majority of progressive would stand in opposition because they want to be protected if some one injures them or their property. Even though that means having to consort with the evil Big I.
Nied
@NR:
Why wouldn’t it? As long as his personal HMO met the minimum coverage requirements it would qualify. Yes as was mentioned it would be expensive, but so would buying the machine tools one would need to build even a late 1700’s rifle.
Quiddity
@askew: You are correct when you note that Obama and Reid have not done enough to get judges on the courts.
different church-lady
@Jenny:
I believe if (a) auto insurance were not so heavily regulated (b) optional coverages like collision were compulsory and (c) (yes…) driving a car was not optional to begin with, you would see a lot more of that kind of complaint.
Well hell, so would I. Like I said, it’s mostly to protect harm done to others by your big, potentially lethal, high speed hunk of metal.
My body, on the other hand, is apparently taking place in interstate commerce simply by dint of the fact that I was born.
different church-lady
@ChrisNYC:
Except that you’ve got it ass-backwards: I’m not screwing my neighbors if I die of cancer. Unless my neighbors decide that I must go to the hospital even if that means they have to pay for it.
Freakin’ a… you really can’t see the difference between causing injury to others and misfortune to self? Is there no line where the collective ends and the personal begins?
different church-lady
@Jenny:
Point taken. But in MA the way it works is that every year the insurance companies say “We need a 18% raise in rates to continue doing business in the state,” and the state says, “Bitch you do, you’re gonna take 3%.”
There was even one year when the industry requested a 4% cut in rates, because they knew the state was going to give ’em a bigger cut.
Trust me, if we ran health insurance that way, you’d hear a lot less squawking.
DickSpudCouchPotatoDetective
Wow, I really can’t believe you guys are even having this stupid conversation.
If I can’t or won’t buy healthcare insurance, or can’t get it even if I want to, or for whatever reason just don’t have it, and I go the ER to seek treatment of .. anything, and I can’t pay ..l.. who pays? The answer is, everybody else. The cost of my care is borne by the other people who get treatment, via an increase in the price of services to them.
This cost increase to everyone else is a tax on those people. It’s one of several reasons why healthcare costs more per capita in the US than anywhere else on earth, without creating a corresponding set of better result numbers than are seen anywhere else on earth. Our care costs more, but often delivers less, or the same, as other countries get for less money.
The whole point of the mandate is to make sure that everyone who can pay, pays. It’s a necessary component of the shared risk scheme, since it spreads the costs out over the largest ..and therefore most desirable … population.
That’s it. What the hell is there to argue about? Aside from the fact that idiot Americans, the kind of people who think that a debt default might be a good idea, or think that the earth is 6000 years old, might think that such a mandate is a bad idea. Anyone with a brain can see that it is a good and necessary idea.
Save yourselves from further embarrassment and stop arguing about this.
ChrisNYC
@different church-lady: Ok, fine, the big problem with healthcare is all the damn cancer patients being made to accept care that they don’t want. Have a nice night on planet not-this-country. Watch out that the roving squads of doctors don’t snatch you up and make you consume healthcare. Your liberty is at stake.
Jenny
@different church-lady:
So you oppose Medicare. After all, why should I be forced to pay taxes to cover your misfortune.
Omnes Omnibus
@different church-lady: Can you truly make sure that there is no way ever that you could possibly use medical treatment? Never get hit by a car and be unconscious? Sure that you will just go off into the woods to die of cancer when you get it? What about a situation where you have a disease that is contagious? The rest of the world has to put up with you not getting treated and thereby putting them at risk?
I know, you don’t like the mandate. Great. You think it is a bad policy. Great. None of that means that Congress did not have the power to impose it.
NR
@Nied: No. You’re not understanding what “minimum essential coverage” means. Under the ACA, that means either government insurance (such as Medicare) or a private plan listed on your state’s insurance exchange. You could start up “Bob’s HMO,” but there’s no way that you’d be able to get an HMO covering exactly one person onto a state exchange. So once again, this is not the same thing as the Militia Act of 1792.
NR
@DickSpudCouchPotatoDetective:
No, the whole point of the mandate is to transfer a massive amount of money from American citizens to private insurance companies. Which, of course, is exactly why the Democrats passed it. If the idea was to make sure that everyone who can pay, pays, the Democrats could have simply expanded Medicare to cover everyone in America and paid for it with taxes. They chose not to do so. Instead, they chose to force everyone in America to give money to corporations that take 20 cents out of every dollar while adding no value.
Save yourself from further embarrassment and stop defending shitty policy.
Yutsano
@NR:
The poultry, it must be fornicated. NO DIFFERENCE!! NADER RULES!!
NR
@Yutsano: Huh, I guess incoherent babbling isn’t just for conservatives and babies anymore.
Thymezone
@NR:
Complete bullshit, sir. The alternative to private sector insurance is single payer, and there was, and is, no political viability to that. There may never be. Your argument ascribes an evil purpose to a choice for which the only alternative was to abandon HCR in that congressional cycle entirely and do a repeat of the Clinton HCR fail of 1993. Regulated private insurance is a huge improvement over unregulated private insurance, and that’s why the fight for it was waged … quite frankly, against steep political odds.
You are completely full of crap.
jefft452
@Nied:
“do tell what the difference is here.”
The President was a white non-Democrat in 1792?
NR
@Thymezone:
Bullshit yourself. Political viability is not something that is dictated by god. What is politically viable changes all the time. Just look at the latest debt “negotiation” for a prime example of this.
Medicare is a hugely popular program. All the Democrats had to say was “We want to take Medicare and expand it to cover everyone.” They had the votes in Congress to do it, and they had a massively popular President who could have made the case to the public. But they didn’t. Why? Because their goal was not to improve health care, it was to enrich the private insurance companies.
Older
@Hunter Gathers: I read the whole rest of the comments to make sure I didn’t miss anyone else’s response, so now I can say, WHAT IS IT WITH YOU PEOPLE? ARE YOU NOT LISTENING?
I hadn’t paid any attention, because for reasons that seem good to me, I pay a huge percentage of my income for medical insurance.
But what Ed Shultz said, and he read it directly out of the language in the law, is this: People who don’t buy medical insurance are subject to a tax penalty, BUT ONLY if they get a letter from the government saying they owe it, and if they get this letter, and still don’t pay the penalty, the penalty for not paying the penalty is ABSOLUTELY NOTHING AT ALL. It is spelled out in the law. The government can assess no further penalty, nor place any lien on any property etc.
Now that is the funniest thing I have seen in a long time. It’s right there in the law, where apparently no one can see it. Except Ed.
That said, I do believe the government can require all citizens to pay for things that maybe only some of them will use, but I believe the right way is through taxes.
And I believe that health care is a good thing to apply this power to. It’s a service that is probably used by a higher percentage of the population than, say, auto insurance. There are after all people who have driven all their lives without ever having needed to make a claim on their auto insurance.
Dr. Psycho
@sparky: If a 1792 requirement that members of the militias arm themselves at their own expense doesn’t seem the same to you as the individual health insurance mandate of 2010, how about the individual health insurance mandate (for merchant sailors) of 1798?
http://blogs.bellinghamherald.com/politics/politics/socialized-medicine-for-us-merchant-marine-in-1798/