Posted on 11/24/2009 6:43:28 PM PST by Kaslin
Is Congress going through the ordeal of trying to enact health care reform only to have one of the main pillars — requiring individuals to obtain insurance — declared unconstitutional? An interesting debate for a constitutional law seminar. In the real world, not a big worry.
"This issue is not serious," says Walter Dellinger, acting solicitor general during the Clinton administration.
But it's being taken seriously in some quarters, so it's worth explaining where the Constitution grants Congress the authority to impose an individual mandate. There are two short answers: the power to regulate interstate commerce and the power to tax.
First, the Commerce Clause. Spending on health care consumes 16% — and growing — of the gross national product. There is hardly an individual activity with greater effect on commerce than the consumption of health care.
If you arrive uninsured at an emergency room, that has ripple effects through the national economy — driving up costs and premiums for everyone.
If you choose to go without insurance, that limits the size of the pool of insured individuals and — assuming you are young and healthy — drives up premium costs.
(Excerpt) Read more at investors.com ...
it’s not. government presumption of personal liberty is not constitutional. in fact the constitution itself demontrates that it’s opposite.
By the same logic, the govt has the right to take useless feeders out and shoot them in ditches.
This is the definition of infinite govt power, the exact opposite of the vision of our Founding Fathers.
This way lies revolution against govt tyranny.
Total, unadulterated bullsh-t. It takes liberty and deletes it from the American way.
Congressman Billybob
It’s not unConstitutional because the Constitution is what we say it is.
“”This issue is not serious,” says Walter Dellinger, acting solicitor general during the Clinton administration. “
Let’s hear from Mark Levin or Bork, not a Clinton hack.
It's over.
“When you charge someone money for not doing something that the government wants you to do, that is a “fine” not a tax, that is criminal, not civil. And it is unconstitutional.
Congressman Billybob”
Thank you, sir!
This president himself noted the Constitution is full of what government cannot do - it is why he hates it. He said it does not allow gov to force all these issues on us.
Tell them in a huddle, only the QB talks.
Whose right is health care? Do you think it's yours?
Congressman Anthony Weiner has said that health care is not a commodity. If it isn't a commodity then do doctors and nurses have rights? Assigning health care the status of a right makes health care workers slaves to that right who must serve it. On what ground could a health care worker refuse to provide their products and services since that would violate the patient's "basic human right to health care."
That is a direct loss of individual rights for health care providers. The collective right of the people to receive health care would supersede the provider's individual right to set fees and hours or to change their occupational status or even decide how to apply their skills and knowledge if taken to its logical extreme. A collective right, by practical definition, is a state right because it is a right that is created and given by the government to those it chooses to give it to. It is not a natural right possessed by each person protected by the Constitution from the government. It is also a collective/state right by virtue of the fact that it would supersede individual rights when the two come into conflict. How else would the government view a right that it created and administers vs. one it has no control over?
Of course it isn't stated in any bill that a patient's right to care supersedes a provider's right to set fees and hours etc, but it doesn't need to. Rights, as always, are adjudicated in the courts. The Health Care Reform bills simply establish the foundation for the courts to rule in favor of the collective right.
Weiner’s view is collectivist, fascist and totalitarian. Collectivist because it has to be described as being a right of the many instead of the one and superior due to that fact. Fascist because ultimately the sole authority for its creation and oversight is from one entity the Federal government. Totalitarian because the Federal government is the enforcer of this collective right as well. State and local jurisdictions will have little say about it.
Congressman Weiner's view is the underlying philosophy of all of the Health Care Reform legislation in the House and Senate. Consider this section in the Senate version of the bill; the setting up of community watch dogs that will monitor citizens for various health parameters. Read pages 382 - 393.
TITLE I—QUALITY, AFFORDABLE HEALTH CARE FOR ALL AMERICANS pps 382 - 393
So, even citizens themselves will be subject to Federal regulations on their behavior in order to fulfill the "human right" of universal health care. It isn't the individual's liberty that is being protected by that it is the government's control over its own health care system that is being guarded. How much clearer can it be that these bills abrogate the concept of individual rights? Someone will be checking your lifestyle, according to gov regulations, to be certain you serve the best interests of the "basic human right to health care" ie. "the Public Option."
HCR is not just about rationing care and wealth redistribution. It's about the end of individual rights as the corrosive effects of the new collectivist "basic human right to health care" spreads throughout the legal and political systems like a virus.
I think that the main purpose of Health Care Reform (HCR) is as a direct assault on individual liberties.
Health Care is a Liberty Issue
Conservative Underground - 18 August 2009 - Tim Dunkin
Another Stupid Argument: Heath Care is a Right
Obama's Authoritarian, Unconstitutional Health Care Proposal
To Americans Who Believe Healthcare is a Right
OBAMA: HEALTH CARE DESTROYING FREE SPEECH
Mandated health insurance threatens freedom, privacy
Second Bill of Rights aka FDR's economic bill of rights
(An early attempt to embed collective rights into American politics and society.)
The new slogan of national healthcare;
“You’ll buy it, if you know what’s good for you!”
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find only things evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelogus
Not so fast. Rivkin and Casey argue otherwise in the Wall Street Journal—and their argument seems airtight:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204518504574416623109362480.html
“The Supreme Court construes the commerce power broadly. In the most recent Commerce Clause case, Gonzales v. Raich (2005) , the court ruled that Congress can even regulate the cultivation of marijuana for personal use so long as there is a rational basis to believe that such ‘activities, taken in the aggregate, substantially affect interstate commerce.’
“But there are important limits. In United States v. Lopez (1995), for example, the Court invalidated the Gun Free School Zones Act because that law made it a crime simply to possess a gun near a school. It did not ‘regulate any economic activity and did not contain any requirement that the possession of a gun have any connection to past interstate activity or a predictable impact on future commercial activity.’ Of course, a health-care mandate would not regulate any ‘activity,’ such as employment or growing pot in the bathroom, at all. Simply being an American would trigger it.”
In addition, there are serious violations of privacy in both the House and Senate bills. Such intrusions permeate both bills.
Exactly. Otherwise Congress could order us to eat our spinach—and fine us if we didn’t.
Dellinger has always been full of crap.
Some states don’t allow insurance companies to compete across state lines so that throws out the interstate commerce clause crap.
Next!
>>>government presumption of personal liberty is not constitutional. in fact the constitution itself demontrates that it’s opposite.
Yet for decades Americans were conscripted into service in the armed forces and men are still required by the federal government to register with the Selective Service. I don’t think either of these have been found unconstitutional, and I am guessing they have been challenged.
Using this nitwit’s logic, every American should be allowed to shoot abortion doctors and pro-abortion judges and politicians because abortion reduces the government tax base, which has ripples throughout the economy.
Every welfare bum who takes money from taxpayers should be thrown out of America, because taking that tax money reduces the government take, which has ripples throughout the economy.
Every federal bureaucrat should be fired, because paying them taxpayer money takes money from the government, which has ripples throughout the economy.
Some states? I was under the impression NO state allows insurance companies to compete across state lines.
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