Healthcare Law Appealed To Supreme Court 1019
26 states and a small business group have filed separate appeals to the U.S. Supreme Court, asking it to strike down Obama's 2010 healthcare law. In August, an appeals court in Atlanta ruled that the individual insurance requirement was unconstitutional, making it almost certain that the bill would go to the Supreme Court. From the article: "The Obama administration earlier this week said it decided against asking the full U.S. Appeals Court for the 11th Circuit to review the August ruling by a three-judge panel of the court that found the insurance requirement unconstitutional. That decision cleared the way for the administration to go to the Supreme Court. The administration has said it believes the law will be upheld in court while opponents say it represents an unconstitutional encroachment of federal power."
Re:What other products (Score:4, Informative)
The distinction here is that health care ,,,
We are talking about health insurance, not health care.
Re:What other products (Score:3, Informative)
Guns, tanks, cruise missiles, aircraft carriers. I don't use any of those, and yet I am required to pay for them.
Re:What other products (Score:3, Informative)
Re:What other products (Score:4, Informative)
Water. Try owning a house in any city without running water. You'll be fined/charged.
Electricity. Pretty much the same, unless you (like the Amish) can drum up some form of "religious objection." Good luck managing it unless you're Amish or Mennonite.
Clothing... check. Either you buy it, or someone buys it and gifts it to you.
Education. You pay, through your taxes, for it. One way or another.
Retirement. See also: Social Security. You can argue over the semantics all day long, you can argue you are "paying now for someone else and others will pay for you"... end of the day, you are contributing funds to a government program designed to ensure that the elderly are not left Completely Fucking Destitute.
The list goes on pretty considerably.
Re:Queues? (Score:3, Informative)
Perfectly reasonable. (Score:5, Informative)
Except the Constitution explicitly gives congress the power to collect taxes. It is not at all clear that it has the power to "mandate that individuals enter into contracts with private insurance companies for the purchase of an expensive product from the time they are born until the time they die".
All laws where similar things are done (such as requiring car insurance, requiring contractors to be licensed and bonded,etc), differ in significant ways. Some are enforced by the state, not the federal government, who have different powers granted to them. Some only apply when participating in an arguably optional activity not to everyone alive. Some are only required to engage in business, and thus more clearly fall under the interstate commerce act. This is an open legal question, one that was bound to challenged when the law was passed. The faster it gets resolved in the Supreme Court the better.
However, I have no reason to believe that the Supreme Court will come to the obvious and logical conclusion here. That's not their job.
No it isn't their job. Their job is to interpret the law and constitution as it is written, not according their own personal opinion/logic nor yours.
Re:What other products (Score:3, Informative)
God and such a terrible burden it is. Of course I guess the alternative in a wonderful libertarian utopia would be deny to medical treatment to anyone not wearing a seat belt during a crash, after all that's that would be the logical thing for an insurance company to do. Yeah let's do that rather than mandating the minor inconvenience in order to save lives and reduce overall health care costs for everyone. I guess you're against speed limits as well? If I want to drive 100 mph in a school zone I have every right!
Speed limits are set by the states because there is nothing in the Constitution that gives the federal government the power to regulate traffic laws. According to the 10th Amendment, any power not given to the federal government by the Constitution, and that is not prohibited by the Constitution, are reserved for the states, or people. Health care is like speed limits. Since there is no Constitutionally granted power for the feds to regulate it, the power falls to the states. This is why the Massachusetts health care law is Constitutional, but "Obamacare" is not.
Re:What other products (Score:2, Informative)
> This goes back to the "Do you let them die?" question. Should a hospital let someone
> bleeding to death die in their Emergency Room if they have no insurance? I think except
> for at republican debates the answer is "no".
Which is a filthy lie. Even RON PAUL said they shouldn't be left to die. He did correctly note that the Federal government has no authority to get involved. But that as a practicing physician before the Feds got involved he never saw a patient left to die. This is where private charity's place in society lies. There are some things the government should not, must not be allowed to do that still need be done. Progressives tend to be totalitarian though, Everything within the State, nothing without. So if the State isn't paying for the indigent's health care they die. But there used to be a vibrant world between the individual citizen and the State with it's guns and regulators. A multitude of civic, fraternal, religious, even ethnic organizations used to exist and were very active. They provided many services now absorbed by various government agencies. There could exist again.
Re:What other products (Score:2, Informative)
Re:What other products (Score:2, Informative)
The General Welfare Clause is a part of Article I Section 8, not just the preamble. It permits the federal government (namely Congress) to use its taxing powers for the purpose of promoting the welfare of the Union. It is then up to the Court to decide if the law serves that purpose, as Congress may not levy taxes for any reason it pleases.
Re:What other products (Score:5, Informative)
The Congress shall have power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;
Article 1, Section 8
Re:What other products (Score:4, Informative)
All of which use separate insurance pools for each state.
Re:What other products (Score:5, Informative)
No one will be turned away from an emergency room.
I beg to differ. Some years ago, one of my cousins was turned away from ER. He was uninsured of course, or he probably would have seen a doctor a lot sooner. He was suffering from terrible headaches, couldn't even sit down because that made the pounding worse. He died the next day, presumably from an aneurysm in his head. He was about 45 years old. ER might not have been able to save him, who knows? But it should never have escalated to that point. Could he have been saved if he'd had access to basic health care months before his problem reached the crisis point, when he himself probably didn't think it was anything serious?
Everyone seems aware of the problems with health insurance. But hardly anyone bashes the medical providers for their crazy billing practices. It's insane, and downright fraudulent the way doctors run the business. You see very few prices up front. They claim they can't give you any price until they know more. Maybe, but there are plenty of known prices they keep from you until well after the fact. If you ask about the price, they'll tell you not to worry (bad for your health, maybe?) insurance will cover it. Then they sometimes demand that you sign a blank check. They push you to sign a form that says you'll pay for something if insurance doesn't. And they won't tell you the price even when it's for something easy. They pulled that one on us for a wheelchair, and not a motorized one either, that turned out to be just over $800. Another stunt they pulled on us was having us keep a medical device for an extra week, unused, without informing us that it cost $1100 per week to rent!