Posted on 11/23/2011 5:55:00 AM PST by IbJensen
With the Supreme Court’s decision to review the constitutionality of Obamacare’s individual mandate, that feature of Obamacare has been getting a lot of attention. The individual mandate is the requirement that essentially every American buy government-approved health insurance under penalty of law. The Obama administration claims that because Congress is empowered to regulate interstate commerce, it is also empowered to compel interstate (or, more often, intrastate) commerce — which is a rather novel interpretation of the Constitution.
Moreover, the news from the Court comes hot on the heels of the passage of an anti-individual-mandate measure in Ohio. The measure was approved by voters in all 88 counties of that crucial swing state — and by at least 20-point margins in 81 of those counties.
In light of these developments, it’s not surprising that the individual mandate has been getting plenty of attention of late. But is the mandate really the only thing that’s wrong with this 2,700-page de facto legal code that’s masquerading as a “law”? Hardly.
Here’s a partial list of the myriad other objectionable features of Obamacare:
It’s 2,700 pages long. Legislation of such unconscionable length is not only complicated to a degree that’s hard to fathom — this chart from Sen. Jim DeMint helps to some extent (you have to enlarge it to see it) — but it also severs the link between the law and the average citizen. It makes it essentially impossible for the law to be something that the citizenry can know and understand, even to a reasonable degree. A complicated monstrosity like Obamacare is a vehicle for government by bureaucratic and lawyerly “elites,” not for government by the people.
It would cause millions of Americans to lose their employer-sponsored health insurance and be dumped into Obamacare “exchanges.” These exchanges would be heavily subsidized, which means that much of the burden of health coverage would be shifted from employers to taxpayers. Already, 4.5 million Americans have lost their employer-sponsored health insurance since Obamacare was passed, as the overhaul offers plentiful financial incentives for employers to get out of the business of providing health care for their employees. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) had estimated that from 2010 to 2011 six million people would gain employer-sponsored insurance — so the CBO’s estimates are already off by more than 10 million people. If Obamacare goes fully into effect (in 2014), far more Americans will lose their employer-sponsored health insurance.
It would loot Medicare. The CBO projects that during the overhaul’s real first decade (2014 to 2023), nearly $1 trillion would be siphoned out of Medicare and spent on Obamacare. The decision by President Obama and the then-Democratic Congress to fund much of Obamacare by pilfering from Medicare was an act of unusual political brazenness — one that voters in Florida aren’t likely to forget. (Most of the rest of Obamacare would be funded through tax increases.) The resulting lower reimbursement rates for Medicare providers — which the Medicare chief actuary says would soon fall below even the reimbursement rates for Medicaid providers — would mean that Medicare patients would either find themselves getting rushed through their medical visits, or else having fewer health-care providers be willing to see them at all.
It would cost twice as much as the deficit commission is trying to “save.” The CBO says that Obamacare would cost an estimated $2.5 trillion during its real first ten years, at a time when the deficit commission is trying to come up with $1.2 trillion in “savings” over ten years.
It would raise, rather than lower, health costs. The Medicare chief actuary says that Obamacare would increase health costs by hundreds of billions of dollars by the end of this decade.
It would massively expand Medicaid. At a time when our national debt is $15,000,000,000,000.00 and is about the size of our entire gross domestic product, Obamacare would provide a colossal expansion of Medicaid — expanding it to cover portions of the middle class. In fact, the CBO projects that fully half of the newly insured under Obamacare would be people dumped into Medicaid at taxpayer expense (see Table 4).
It would establish the grisly IPAB. The Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB) is a sort of poor man’s (because less powerful) British National Institute for Clinical Health and Excellence (NICE), the British rationing agency that so many of Obama’s nominees are rather enamored with. The IPAB would be charged with keeping future Medicare spending below a specified level. The dictates of its 15 unelected members would have the force of law and couldn’t be overruled even by a majority vote in both houses of Congress and the president’s signature.
It would politicize medicine and amass unprecedented power and money in Washington at the expense of Americans’ liberty. Alexis de Tocqueville warned democracies of the extraordinary dangers of the consolidation and centralization of power. He warned:
A democratic republic … in which … administrative centralization [was] accepted by custom and by law … would become more intolerable than in any of the absolute monarchies of Europe.
He presciently added:
It may easily be foreseen that almost all the able and ambitious members of a democratic community will labor unceasingly to extend the powers of government, because they all hope at some time or other to wield those powers themselves. It would be a waste of time to attempt to prove to them that extreme centralization may be injurious to the state, since they are centralizing it for their own benefit.
The individual mandate is only the tip of the iceberg. It’s time to repeal Obamacare. Jeffrey H. Anderson, an independent writer, was the senior speechwriter for Secretary Mike Leavitt at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Email Print Decrease Font Size Increase Font Size
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1. jd
” It makes it essentially impossible for the law to be something that the citizenry can know and understand, even to a reasonable degree. A complicated monstrosity like Obamacare is a vehicle for government by bureaucratic and lawyerly “elites,” not for government by the people.”
Mean While – Ignorance of the Law Is NO Excuse! November 23, 2011 - 2:55 am Link to this Comment | Reply 2. Libertyship46
“The IPAB would be charged with keeping future Medicare spending below a specified level. The dictates of its 15 unelected members would have the force of law and couldn’t be overruled even by a majority vote in both houses of Congress and the president’s signature.”
Death Panels. This was the very idea that Sarah Palin was ridiculed for many months ago, yet here it is. If Obamacare passes in the Supreme Court, this will be our future. They will tell you what medication you can have, what medical procedures you can have, what access to doctors you can have, and, worse, when you reach a certain age, what medical services can be denied to you. So if you’re about 80 and you need a heart by-pass operation, you’re going to be out of luck because you’re simply not worth it. Or if you need special cancer treatment at age 65, too bad because you’re just too old to be worth saving. This is what is being done in England right now and this is what is going to happen here. How much is a life worth? Well apparently not much to these people. And worse, nobody ever elected any of these killers, nobody ever had a say in what they would be doing, and certainly nobody in the public ever approved of their massive, overreaching powers. THAT is why the election of 2012 is so very important. Even if the Supreme Court overturns part of Obamacare, it is still on the books and MUST BE repealed. If not, like Rasputin, it could come back from the dead an be implemented by the next Democratic Congress.
This is the line in the sand. This is where Americans have to take a stand. Do you want an all-powerful central government to literally have control over your life, or do you at least want to have medical coverage where you have a say on whether or not you live or die? The choice is really up to you, which is why the election of 2012 is the most important one we’ve ever had in this country. Stand up now and throw the Democrats out of office, or watch your life be terminated by a small group of people nobody has ever seen, let alone elected.
Don’t let this happen to you or your family. It may sound trite, but your medical future is literally in your hands next November.
Don’t let this happen to you or your family. It may sound trite, but your medical future is literally in your hands next November.
If the Supreme Court rules that the individual mandate is Unconstitutional will that toss out the whole bill?
The whole thing is an atrocity in it’s entirety.
The whole thing needs to be tossed in the toilet before we spend more than we already have in getting it started.
As important as that is ther is another important job for us , to toss the scum who passed it out of the Capitol.
bflr
An early ruling really p’d me off, showing that SOMETHING has to be done about the leftist infested judiciary in this country.
Congress “forgot” to include a standard “severability” clause in 0bamacare. Severability clauses state that if any part of the law is found to be unconstitutional, the rest of the law is “severed” and remains as law. Since they forgot this clause, if ANY part of the law is found unconstitutional, the WHOLE LAW is null and void.
However, in an early ruling, a judge actually stated that 0bamacare was “inherently severable”, and though the mandate was unconstitutional, the rest of the law could remain in force.
Last month I was in ICU for 5 days and received the best care possible. If obamacare was in effect I have to wonder what the outcome would've been?
According to another post today, if you are over 70 and under care, you are a 'unit' and not a person. That indicates the level of care you would receive under the new system.
It's a house of cards, knock out one and it collapses.
Dang, another penumbra!
Its the enforcement and penalties for not becoming a slave to a socialistic pogrom. It authorizes the creation of an enforcement service that then has the law behind them to go in and take away all you have to give away to the lesser groups.
the idea is nice but its the 99,000 pages of penalties after it that is what is dangerous.
Then remember that Kathleen Sebelius and her thugs are busting their asses 24/7/365 to implement this monstrosity.
When push come to shove I suspect they will claim that Obamacare is "too big to repeal" or, "to big to be ruled unconstitutional."
A buoyed healthcare law reaches Supreme Court
In June, Judge Jeffrey Sutton, a former clerk to Justice Antonin Scalia, wrote a lengthy opinion for the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati upholding the law and concluding that Congress' powers under the Commerce Clause give it very broad authority to regulate markets, including health insurance.
Using similar reasoning, Judge Laurence H. Silberman, an influential conservative and longtime Scalia friend, last week also upheld the law in an opinion for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. Silberman explicitly rejected the partisan attack on the law, writing that criticism of the mandate "seems to us a political judgment," not evidence it violates the Constitution.
Both Silberman and Sutton cited Scalia's opinion in 2005 upholding strict federal regulation of marijuana in the case of Angel Raich, a Californian who used home-grown marijuana to relieve her pain. "If Congress could regulate Angel Raich when she grew marijuana on her property for self-consumption," Sutton wrote, "it is difficult to say Congress may not regulate the 50 million Americans who self-finance their medical care."
http://mobile.latimes.com/p.p?a=rp&m=b&postId=1165037
“If the Supreme Court rules that the individual mandate is Unconstitutional will that toss out the whole bill?”
No but without the individual mandate the program cannot work so it would effectively kill the whole thing. I personally think we will see a 5-4 ruling throwing out at least the individual mandate. They don’t like to admit it but the SCOTUS does put its finger in the wind. The public hates this bill.
I don’t think so. The whole idea of the individual mandate is that everyone has to sign up and pay premiums. So all the young healthy people who hardly ever have a claim will be paying premiums to float the boat for everyone else. Just another Ponzi scheme. The Congress is under no compunction to do anything else to fund Obamacare other than what is written in the legislation. In fact they can and are attempting to defund as much of it as possible now. This was a disasterous piece of legislation which will fail and be done away with whether the SCOTUS throws it out or not. IMO.
By finding this monstrosity Constitutional, Scotus will formally, and without civil recourse, deliver a once free people into tyranny. We did not grant such powers in 1787-1789, nor did any amendment do so. There is no moral reason to comply with Obamacare and every natural law reason to fight it. So what will we do?
We'll probably follow its diktats like the pitiful and disgusting sheep we have become. I wield as loud a keyboard as anyone at FR and wonder if I have the courage to actually “do something” when and if the time arrives.
Even if a conservative is elected President, and we take both houses by two thirds, I give the odds of turning back the tide of tyranny a less than 20% chance.
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