Posted on 02/23/2010 6:31:29 AM PST by truthandlife
The health care plan proposed by President Barack Obama on Monday includes an individual mandate requiring every American to have health insurance despite concerns from Republican lawmakers and legal experts that the provision is not constitutional.
Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), the longest-serving Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, has called the constitutionality of an individual mandate into question. Meanwhile, more than 30 state legislators have either passed or are considering legislation that would not require residents of their states to buy health insurance.
Nevertheless, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs told CNSNews.com that he is not aware of any legal review of this question by the White House.
CNSNews.com asked Gibbs, “President Obama’s proposal includes an individual mandate, which many Republicans, Orrin Hatch and others, have said is not constitutional. Will the White House have any sort of legal analysis explaining why that is constitutional?”
Gibbs said, “I don’t know the answer to that. I have not heard anybody discuss the constitutionality of that. I don’t pretend to be a lawyer, but this is a concept that has been around for quite some time.”
Both the House and Senate bills require individuals to buy health insurance or pay a penalty. The House bill’s penalty-payment is a percentage of income, while the Senate sets the penalty as a flat dollar amount or percentage of income, whichever is higher.
“The president’s proposal adopts the Senate approach but lowers the flat dollar assessments, and raises the percent of income assessment that individuals pay if they choose not to become insured,” the White House plan released on Monday says.
“Specifically, it lowers the flat dollar amounts from $495 to $325 in 2015 and $750 to $695 in 2016,” the proposal states. “Subsequent years are indexed to $695 rather than $750, so the flat dollar amounts in later years are lower than the Senate bill as well.
“The president’s proposal raises the percent of income [from the Senate bill] that is an alternative payment amount from 0.5 to 1.0% in 2014, 1.0 to 2.0% in 2015, and 2.0 to 2.5% for 2016 and subsequent years – the same percent of income as in the House bill, which makes the assessment more progressive,” the proposal says.
Obama’s plan further says that a married couple earning less than $18,700 will not have to pay the penalty.
Hatch told CNSNews.com in November that if Congress can mandate that citizens buy health care, or mandate the purchase of anything, “we’ve lost our freedoms, and that means the federal government can do anything it wants to do to us.”
Many Democrats have relied on the Commerce Clause, in Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution, as the authority for their health insurance mandate. That section says: “The Congress shall have power to … regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes.”
According to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), the federal government has never before mandated that Americans buy any good or service. In 1994, when Congress was considering a universal health care plan formulated by then-First Lady Hillary Clinton, the CBO studied the plan’s provision that would have forced individuals to buy health insurance and determined it was an unprecedented act.
The CBO stated: “A mandate requiring all individuals to purchase health insurance would be an unprecedented form of federal action. The government has never required people to buy any good or service as a condition of lawful residence in the United States. An individual mandate would have two features that, in combination, would make it unique. First, it would impose a duty on individuals as members of society. Second, it would require people to purchase a specific service that would be heavily regulated by the federal government.”
Meanwhile, Virginia’s Legislature passed a bill stating that state residents will not be required to pay the federal penalty if they do not buy health insurance, The Wall Street Journal reported. Meanwhile, the paper said, the House in the Utah Legislature passed a similar bill as did the Tennessee State Senate.
The Legislatures of Georgia, Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, Oklahoma and South Dakota are expected to have votes on this legislation in the coming weeks, the Journal said.
Sorry Obama! I will choose what is correct for my own family!
SET THEIR LOCAL AND DC LINES ON FIRE!
Sen. Scot Brown's number is 202-224-5443
Capitol Hill switchboard is 202-224-3121
Lots of local demwit phone numbers on this thread.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2408217/posts
Rename, repackage, rewrite it a tad smaller, and sell another pig in a poke.
Tennessee has joined several other states in trying to pass a Health Care Freedom Act. NO COLAs for granny, retired Military or retired fed employees. BIG NEW fees for Tricare for Life retired over 65 Military's secondary health ins. (DOD bill already passed, delayed but goes into effect 2011)
http://www.navytimes.com/news/2009/10/military_tricarefees_blocked_100709w/
New Dem mantra: Woof, woof eat dog food granny....ala let them eat cake.
Friday, February 19, 2010
Obama says slight fix will extend Social Security
http://townhall.com/news/us/2010/02/19/obama_says_slight_fix_will_extend_social_security
Health Care Rationing for Seniors Another Problem in New Obama Plan
http://www.lifenews.com/bio3058.html
TRI CARE FOR LIFE This from a google search:
http://economicspolitics.blogspot.com/2009/05/tricare-for-life-is-obama-trying-to.html
This option would help reduce the costs of TFL, as well as costs for Medicare, by introducing minimum out-of pocket requirements for beneficiaries. Under this option, TFL would not cover any of the first $525 of an enrollee’s cost-sharing liabilities for calendar year 2011 and would limit coverage to 50 percent of the next $4,725 in Medicare cost sharing that the beneficiary incurred. (Because all further cost sharing would be covered by TFL, enrollees could not pay more than $2,888 in cost sharing in that year.)
http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/99xx/doc9925/12-18-HealthOptions.pdf
http://www.vawatchdog.org/09/hcva09/hcva110609-1.htm
Bill Would Restrict Veterans’ Health Care Options 11/06/09
Buyer and McKeon Offer Amendments to Protect Veterans and TRICARE Beneficiaries
Congress plans to block Tricare fee increases
http://www.armytimes.com/news/2009/10/military_tricarefees_blocked_100709w
By Rick Maze - Staff writer, Oct 7, 2009
Tricare fee increases imposed last week by the Defense Department will be repealed by a provision of the compromise 2010 defense authorization bill unveiled Wednesday by House and Senate negotiators.
Snip
The fee increases were announced on Sept. 30 and took effect on Oct. 1, but the defense bill, HR 2647, includes a provision barring any fee increases until the start of fiscal 2011.
Snip
Retired Army Maj. Gen. Bill Matz, president of the National Association for Uniformed Services, said the announcement of fee increases was shocking considering that the Obama administration promised earlier this year to hold off on any new fee Tricare fee increases until fiscal 2011.
“President Obama and DoD assured NAUS and the entire military family earlier this year that there would rightly be no increases in any Tricare fees” in fiscal 2010, Matz said. “We took them at their word, and I can’t believe that a co-pay increase like this was allowed to go forward,” he added.
Bambi doesn't keep his promises...so buyer beware.
The age group it comes down on the hardest consists mostly of unemployed young men.
All that's going to happen is that a bunch of otherwise well-meaning but stupid IRS employees are going to encounter effective belligerence on the part of their target population.
Obama would do better by targeting a much more docile part of the population ~ for example Trade Unionist state and local government employees.
They'll put up with any indignity or abuse ~ TAX THEM FIRST!
Is obama’s bill on line?
Hey BO,
Keep your laws OFF my BODY!
So pass it already, Obama! And have fun this November!
time to give your local Blue Dog Congressman another dose of Tea Party outrage
So if all $300 million of us were to all the sudden pick up insurance, the cost would come down to $100 a month right? hehe
Are their words to describe this loathsome vermin?
If 25~50 million of us were to opt out and tell the penalty collecting IRS to take a hike...
Oh good.... that means it is unconstitutional, and therefore non-binding.
I’m curious, how many of you folks are going to decline Medicare coverage and Social Security when you reach that age?
Obummer - “Constitution? We don’t need no stinkin’ Constitution!”
What are you talking about? both programs are already broke.
They stole the money they forced us to pay into those programs a LONG time ago... and once they started doing it, it ceased to be the system it was designed to be.
They basically turned a forced savings program into a wealth re-distribution ponzie scheme. I seriously doubt there will be any money left worth denying within the next few years.... it’s already officially broke.
Fool me once... shame on you... fool me twice... shame on me.
The only reason it is still in operation is because nobody is willing to take the political fallout of ending it.
Well, by the time everyone reaches their 60’s, they’re all socialists and I expect when the dust settles and everyone has what amounts to a major medical policy with large deductibles, this will just be another broke system that nobody will have the political will to get rid of. It is like how everyone b!tches and moans every year about changes in the company based insurance, but life goes on and people live with the changes. Gov. health care will be no different.
>>> Gov. health care will be no different.
Wrong... Gov. health care will give the government the power over every other aspect of your life... because anything you do can be in some way related to your health.
At least SS was a simple money in/money out program.
Medicare took us closer...
And this is the full fledged end of American Capitalism.
And, as a small business owner, I rest my case as to why I will NEVER again hire staff. Thanks, Odumbo, for the great small business “stimulus”.
LOL
Good one! You win!
If I’m lucky enough, those ponzi schemes will be long bankrupt by then.
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