Posted on 03/27/2012 4:36:28 PM PDT by Clintonfatigued
“You don’t understand what the mandate is all about. The mandate is a crumb for the insurance companies, to offset the cost of covering ‘pre-existing’ conditions”
Absolutely, and if Obamacare persists without the mandate, the insurance industry will go bust. It would be as if the fire insurance industry had to let people sign up after their houses were on fire. That is not a (to use a currently popular buzzword) sustainable business model.
Now that I think about it, to collapse the market and have insurance companies across the land declaring bankruptcy tomorrow would make for the perfect Saul Alinsky plot to install a single-payer system.
“But in that scenario, how can the government stop offshore insurers from arising and offering plans where premiums are claims are paid online?”
I think you answered your own question. Arrest the internet!
You are wrong with #1 - they CREATE the crises first!
This seems like an egregious case of ‘chicken counting prior to the hatching’.
I don’t trust SCOTUS as far as I can throw them all. Except for Thomas, that is. Consistently conservative.
Excellent, he’s under 50.
“Which of the justices claimed that ‘inactivity is an activity’? She had a point. Doing nothing is a choice not to do something”
The more I think about arguments like this, the more it makes me hate lawyers. Pure sophistry, it is. Doing nothing may be choice, or may not. It’s entirely possible not to buy health insurance without having ever considered it. It is also possible to make a choice to buy insurance without ever going through with it. You get run over by a bus on your way to the local insurance provider, for instance.
Now, that choice, was it commerce? No, obviously. You have to actually buy the insurance before you’ve engaged in commerce. Chosing not to buy insurance, likewise, is not commerce. It may have been economic activity, I’ll grant. Sitting on the couch doing nothing is an alternative to getting up off your ass, and choosing it demonstrates you value nothing over whatever doing something would have gotten you. But it still isn’t commerce. You need an overt action for that.
Obviously I am Still Thinking. I don’t count myself as part of a conservative “we” when they go off on an authoritarian tangent. Conservatives can abuse governmental power too. Your original post made it seem like it was a bad thing that he valued freedom of individuals above governments’ power to take it from them.
Pain is pleasure to the sadist.
There are SC cases for every contingency.
The solicitor for The Obammunist cites the farmer who grew wheat only for his family and his animals. He still grew more than FDR dictated for his acreage.
The guy sold nothing.
The court said by growing more than his allocation he was not participating in commerce (needing to buy), thus impeding it, thus subject to the commerce clause.
The court is the final arbiter of intent.
Don't forget, Kagen, Sotomeyor, Ginsberg and Breyer can read minds.
yitbos
“Pain is pleasure to the sadist”
That’s irrelevant. Pain actually can be pleasurable to non-sadists, too. Or at least lead to pleasure since the brain sends endophines out to couteract it. Non-action cannot be commerce under any circumstances. To say so would be like saying pain can be apples as well as pleasure. It makes no sense.
“The solicitor for The Obammunist cites the farmer who grew wheat only for his family and his animals. He still grew more than FDR dictated for his acreage”
That case, Wickard v. Filburn, is not only wrong, but also one of the worst that has ever decided by SCOTUS. Nevertheless, it doesn’t apply.
“The guy sold nothing.”
Yes, but he didn’t do nothing. He grew food for his own consumption. That’s not commerce, though SCOTUS effectively ruled it as such. It was overt action, and that’s been the standard ever since. Notice how often Scalia refers to action in his medical marijuana decision.
“The court said by growing more than his allocation he was not participating in commerce (needing to buy), thus impeding it, thus subject to the commerce clause.”
He wasn’t merely not engaging in commerce; he was doing something that supposedly affected interstate commerce. That something he was doing was not choosing not to buy wheat grown out of state. It was growing wheat himself. It was an overt action, and, again that has been the standard.
The current SCOTUS can change that standard, but not only would they be wrong, it’d be unprecedented.
“The court is the final arbiter of intent.”
Ah, but they didn’t rule on intent, did they? (If the famrer had only thought about growing his own food, there never would have been a case. He did grow wheat, and therefore there was something to regualate, even if it wasn’t commerce. Obamacare seeks to regulate something which doesn’t exist, which according to their arguments is predicted future healthcare expenditures. They cannot do so, because it’s impossible to regulate nothingness, as it were.
“Don’t forget, Kagen, Sotomeyor, Ginsberg and Breyer can read minds.”
They can do whatever they want, apparently without fear of impeachment on Kagan’s part. But they cannot use Wickard to rule the mandate legal. Not that they wouldn’t cite it. They’d just be citing it incorrectly.
endophines = endorphins
But does Kennedy listen to them?
yitbos
Governor Lamm advises Hussein?
yitbos
“does Kennedy listen to them?”
I don’t want to predict. But he has, hasn’t he?, been going along with us on recent important decisions, eg. Citizens United and the D.C. gun ban.
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