The crux of his response seems to be that an alternative to Obamacare would be to charge people a $695 penalty only when they show up to an emergency room without insurance. He’s saying this would be okay, because it’s not charging people a penalty for doing nothing, just sitting at home, but conditioned on them going to an emergency room, so it would be just like any other sales tax, toll, fee, etc.
http://www.supremecourt.gov/oral_arguments/argument_transcripts/11-398-Tuesday.pdf
JUSTICE SOTOMAYOR: Do you think that there’s — what percentage of the American people who took their son or daughter to an emergency room and that child was turned away because the parent didn’t have insurance — do you think there’s a large percentage of the American population who would stand for the death of that child -
MR. CARVIN: One of the most -
JUSTICE SOTOMAYOR: — if they had an allergic reaction and a simple shot would have saved the child?
MR. CARVIN: One of the more pernicious, misleading impressions that the government has made is that we are somehow advocating that people could get thrown out of emergency rooms, or that this alternative that they’ve hypothesized is going to be enforced by throwing people out of emergency rooms. This alternative, i.e., you condition access to health care on buying health insurance, is enforced in precisely the same way that the Act does. You either buy health insurance or you pay a penalty of $695. You don’t have doctors throwing people out on the street. And — and so the only -
JUSTICE SOTOMAYOR: I’m sorry. Did you say the penalty’s okay but not the mandate? I’m sorry. Maybe I’ve misheard you.
MR. CARVIN: No, no, no. I was — they create this strawman that says: Look, the only alternative to doing it the way we’ve done it, if we condition access to health care on buying health insurance, the only way you can enforce that is making sick people not get care. I’m saying no, no. There’s a perfectly legitimate way they could enforce their alternative, i.e., requiring you to buy health insurance when you access health care, which is the same penalty structure that’s in the Act.
There is no moral dilemma between having people have insurance and denying them emergency service. Congress has made a perfectly legitimate value judgment that they want to make sure that people get emergency care. Since the founding, whenever Congress has imposed that public responsibility on private actors, it has subsidized it from the Federal Treasury. It has not conscripted a subset of the citizenry and made them subsidize the actors who are being hurt, which is what they’re doing here.
They’re making young, healthy people subsidize insurance premiums for the cost that the nondiscrimination provisions have put on insurance premiums and insurance companies.
JUSTICE SOTOMAYOR: So the -
MR. CARVIN: And that is the fundamental problem here.
JUSTICE SOTOMAYOR: So the — I — I want to understand the choices you’re saying Congress has. Congress can tax everybody and set up a public health care system.
MR. CARVIN: Yes.
JUSTICE SOTOMAYOR: That would be okay?
MR. CARVIN: Yes. Tax power is -JUSTICE
SOTOMAYOR: Okay.
MR. CARVIN: I would accept that.
It sounds like Carvin just gave the Wise Latina a partial basis for her decision to support the law, which is what she was looking for with that question.
Congress absolutely has the constitutional authority to nationalize the entire health care system and legally tax citizens to pay for it.
But, every Left Side Congressperson knows that government controlled national health care would NEVER pass Congress.
So, they set up a sham system.
They claim people can “choose” their insurer, “choose” their insurance policy, “choose” their doctor.
The only requirement?
People must “choose” to pay for it.
That's what this lawsuit is all about.
And it's 100% political rhetoric!
America's health care system is already controlled by government.
We're just arguing about the language.