Posted on 04/02/2010 8:35:00 AM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
If Congress can force you to buy insurance, Article I limits on federal power are a dead letter.
The constitutional challenges to ObamaCare have come quickly, and the media are portraying them mostly as hopeless gestures—the political equivalent of Civil War re-enactors. Discussion over: You lost, deal with it.
The press corps never dismissed the legal challenges to the war on terror so easily, but then liberals have long treated property rights and any limits on federal power to regulate commerce as 18th-century anachronisms. In fact, the legal challenges to ObamaCare are serious and carry enormous implications for the future of American liberty.
The most important legal challenge turns on the "individual mandate"—the new requirement that almost every U.S. citizen must buy government-approved health insurance. Failure to comply will be punished by an annual tax penalty that by 2016 will rise to $750 or 2% of income, whichever is higher. President Obama opposed this kind of coercion as a candidate but has become a convert. He even argued in a September interview that "I absolutely reject that notion" that this tax is a tax, because it is supposedly for your own good.
Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum and 13 other state AGs—including Louisiana Democrat Buddy Caldwell—claim this is an unprecedented exercise of state power. Never before has Congress required people to buy a private product to qualify as a law-abiding citizen.(continued)
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
You can always order a paternaty test to make sure...
I’m ordering one for myself...I need to make sure...
But the process is lined out in that chart Kevin Brady (R-Texas) displayed last year to map out the healthcare system that is now being implemented...
I should know if they are my momma and daddy by 2025 or so...
There is a little bit of a backlog clogging the system already...
;-)
They don’t want to be your Mommy and Daddy.
They want to be your foster home.
Regarding the governments health care bill.......I have a big problem trying to sort out how the government is going to control the cost of health insurance and tell them they can only charge a given amount per month, when it can cost them about $5000 a day in a hospital. It just doesn’t make any sense. Unless of course they don’t let you go to the hospital. I’m not that worried about the cost of my doctor.My doctor’s office call is about $80/visit. I was in the hospital for a day and a half and the cost was $15,000, plus the cost for visiting doctors, that I didn’t even know or request. The cost for them was about another $3000.
We never hear about the government looking into the amount a hospital charges Vs insurance. The whole thing needs to be brought together some how. You can’t just look at insurance and forget the costs of hospitals. It isn’t fair to the insurance companies. I’m not saying they don’t over charge but we need to look at the whole picture.
Great piece. If this monstrosity is allowed to stand it means that our liberties are at the whim of congressional majorities, and that the principles of federalism are a dead letter.
Our own Springfield Reformer had a great idea. Here is the post again:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2482502/posts?page=15#15
I’m looking into the possibility of getting a religious exemption for every prolifer in the country. The exemption language attempts to limit exemptions to a few, specific religious groups, probably because they have a long history (50+ years) of conscientious objection on other issues.
However, showing preference toward one religion to the exclusion of others is a classic case of de facto establishment of a religion, thus invoking an Establishment Clause violation. Standing would be immediate, because taxpayer standing, while denied in almost every other kind of case, is available in the right kind of Establishment Clause case. The exception fits.
Therefore, they can’t restrict it to Amish, Christian Science, etc., but would have to allow anyone with a demonstrable conviction that they cannot fund the murder of the unborn, which this bill certainly can be shown to require.
And if about half the country is prolife, and if we all opt out, the little boat called Obamacare loses all it’s fuel and under its own weight sinks forever out of sight.
Just a thought. And I’m thinking it could be a class action setup. We could get millions of people signed on. It could be the best kind of fun.
15 posted on Monday, March 29, 2010 2:48:41 PM by Springfield Reformer (Winston Churchill: No Peace Till Victory!)
This administration took advantage of the lack of information consumers have about the way insurance/hospitals work.
The ‘government’ has basically exploited the situation just to capitalize on the confusion and misinformation.
Nice...huh??? This is the same gov’t that is elected BY us to PROTECT our interests!!
“Constitution? We don’ need no stinkin’ Constitution!”
>The ‘government’ has basically exploited the situation just to capitalize on the confusion and misinformation.
I think that government helped to create the very situation. Consider the law which says that a hospital MUST admit someone to the emergency room, regardless of ability to pay, legal residency status, and [even presumably] ability of treatment. Consider the regulations placed upon insurance companies by the government. Finally, consider malpractice suits from the insurance company’s perspective, the doctor’s perspective, and the hospital’s perspective.
BTTT!
Its simpler than all that. Contrary to Fed. outlaw creation, the US Constitution created a nation gov. of limited power. All powers not enumerated therein, were left to the states and or the people. Of COURSE those seeking gov. takeover of our republic used the General Welfare clause to create HealthCare and many other unlaws in the past hundred years.
The General Welfare clause dictates how any acts from the enumerated Fed. powers are to be implimented, not a grand usurpation of the limits of Fed. power. Duh.
“If Congress can employ money indefinitely to the general welfare, and are the sole and supreme judges of the general welfare, they may take the care of religion into their own hands; they may appoint teachers in every State, county and parish and pay them out of their public treasury; they may take into their own hands the education of children, establishing in like manner schools throughout the Union; they may assume the provision of the poor; they may undertake the regulation of all roads other than post-roads; in short, every thing, from the highest object of state legislation down to the most minute object of police, would be thrown under the power of Congress. Were the power of Congress to be established in the latitude contended for, it would subvert the very foundations, and transmute the very nature of the limited Government established by the people of America.”
— James Madison
See #12.
“Unless of course they don’t let you go to the hospital.”
Won’t work in the short term. Fewer patients means they spread the overhead costs over fewer patients which means the costs for those patients goes up till they can eliminate overhead which will reduce availability of health care.
What is the status on the AG lawsuits or any pending private lawsuits? Is SCOTUS just sitting on their hands for the next 2-4 years before they will even “possibly” review the lawsuits? Personally I have no expectation that SCOTUS will rule against this gross miscarriage of our U.S. constitution. I think that only secession by 12-14 states will be the only solution to quickly bring this monstrosity to a head!
Yes. But what I really meant is that hospitals, insurance companies and malpractice attorneys have done nothing to mitigate the situation for consumers. They have had it their own way for a long time and would not even get together long enough to brace for the inevitable.
It is a blizzard if paper and a real nightmare of being arbitrarily yanked around by all of them if you ever need to have an insurance claim honored. Just getting straight answers is like asking for the sun the moon and the stars.
If everyone concerned would have just seen this coming (and how couldn’t they?) some effort must have been made to streamline and clarify the whole process. “O” is making political capital out of just THIS whole mess...and if HE didn’t someone else would have. Seriously.
I feel like “O” wants to get as much done as quickly as possible before his ‘eligibility’ status becomes a real impediment.
That is part of the point,we pay high prices at the hospitals to cover the costs of those who can’t afford to pay,so Obamacare comes along and guess what ,we are going to pay for free care for those same people ,even more when they get free preventative care the costs are going to skyrocket.
So much for reform and lower costs it is just an expansion of the welfare state and if you are working all you get is a larger bill and longer waits for care and rationing and the ax when you become a senior citizen
Me either, I’m 61 and don’t need a nanny, a mommy or daddy! Especially a pimple faced 25 year old government employee who has NEVER been to Medical School!
If the Congress has the power to compel a consumer to purchase Health Insurance, they ALSO have the power to force PROVIDERS (doctors) to sell their services.
They want to be your warden.
Cordially,
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