Bye Bye Healthcare law
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Topic: Bye Bye Healthcare law
Posted By: Linus
Subject: Bye Bye Healthcare law
Date Posted: 13 December 2010 at 1:00pm
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20101213/ap_on_bi_ge/us_health_care_overhaul_virginia - http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20101213/ap_on_bi_ge/us_health_care_overhaul_virginia
Score. ------------- 
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Hudson rejected the government's argument that it has the power under the Constitution to require individuals to buy health insurance, a provision that was set to take effect in 2014.Replies:
Posted By: FreeEnterprise
Date Posted: 13 December 2010 at 1:04pm
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But, two judges have already said it was Okey dokey...
9th district will overrule. Then off to the supreme court. Where it "should" fall for good.
Fingers crossed. ------------- They tremble at my name... 
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Posted By: usafpilot07
Date Posted: 13 December 2010 at 1:05pm
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While I agree with the argument that it's a slippery slope, I don't think this is where we're going to get a victory against this healthcare plan.
------------- Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo |
Posted By: FreeEnterprise
Date Posted: 13 December 2010 at 1:10pm
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Actually, the way they are attacking it is the best way to defeat it.
The government is telling "free" people that they HAVE TO buy something.
------------- They tremble at my name...
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Posted By: GroupB
Date Posted: 13 December 2010 at 1:11pm
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What? No cry of activist judges? Shocking how that works. ------------- 
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Posted By: brihard
Date Posted: 13 December 2010 at 1:24pm
I think FE is spot on on this one- the strongest argument against the healthcare law is the 'individual mandate', and the state presuming to tell people that they must purchase a product. This is the strongest objection to the current laws in terms both of constitutional law and of principle. ------------- "Abortion is not "choice" in America. It is forced and the democrats are behind it, with the goal of eugenics at its foundation." -FreeEnterprise, 21 April 2011. Yup, he actually said that. |
Posted By: Mack
Date Posted: 13 December 2010 at 1:35pm
This is exactly where it should be defeated. If it is not defeated here, there is no limit to the potential amount of governmental intervention into the lives of citizens. The commerce clause gives congress the power "To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian tribes." All of these are in and of themselves some type of organized government, it was never intended to be used as a club for the federal government to control personal aspects of citizen's lives. (The original intention was to stop economic warfare between the various states that could have torn the nation apart in its early years*.) It is being applied to the healthcare debate through the argument that healthcare is a product which is sold across state lines. (Which will be true in all cases when it becomes a federal product.) The potential misuse if this is allowed to stand is staggering. Consider other products which could meet the definition of sold across state lines. Don't like something in the newspaper/on TV . . . check if the signal/paper sales is crossing state lines or has the potential to. Internet competition bad for local businesses, call the Feds and ask them to invoke the commerce clause to shut down/weaken competition.** *Not the best explanation, but it gets the point across and has the advantage of not requiring a whole bunch of typing. **I'm sure others can provide better examples. ------------- 
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Posted By: usafpilot07
Date Posted: 13 December 2010 at 1:54pm
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I should clarify. I did not mean that I disagree with the premise of WHY it's being struck down. I thought I had addressed that in the first half of my post. I'm saying I don't trust our courts to shoot it down. It was more of a negative nancy post more than a political one. ------------- Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo |
Posted By: Linus
Date Posted: 13 December 2010 at 2:36pm
Activist = going against the popular opinion... Most Americans want this law removed, mainly for that one requirement. -------------
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Posted By: High Voltage
Date Posted: 13 December 2010 at 2:52pm
So wut about removing said offensive requirement? ------------- 
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Posted By: agentwhale007
Date Posted: 13 December 2010 at 2:59pm
Which is not a negative. At all. The court system does not exist to regurgitate popular opinion, it exists to determine law based on constitutionality and feasibility within a structured system, not to go on popular opinion.
This. It'll end up in the Supreme Court, where that section of the reform - the purchase mandate - will most likely get ruled against, as the high court still leans right. Other portions will likely remain intact, which is probably a good thing. There were some positives in the infrastructure of the bill, like a system where people cannot be refused due to prior condition.
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Posted By: agentwhale007
Date Posted: 13 December 2010 at 3:03pm
Legally it's not so much the forcing of someone to buy something - or, in this case, pay for something - that is causing the issue. It's the forcing of someone to buy something from a third-party business. People are "forced" through living here to pay - through taxes - for unemployment insurance. But you're paying through the state through a taxation system, not to Blue Cross Blue Shield, etc.
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Posted By: Linus
Date Posted: 13 December 2010 at 3:39pm
The idea of it? Of course not. Too bad what really happens =/= how it SHOULD be. -------------
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Posted By: agentwhale007
Date Posted: 13 December 2010 at 3:41pm
Examples?
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Posted By: Benjichang
Date Posted: 13 December 2010 at 4:11pm
-------------  irc.esper.net #paintball |
Posted By: agentwhale007
Date Posted: 13 December 2010 at 4:14pm
You can choose not to own a vehicle.
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Posted By: Mack
Date Posted: 13 December 2010 at 4:28pm
And, car insurance is also to protect others from your carelessness.
Ah . . . I misinterpreted. -------------
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Posted By: ParielIsBack
Date Posted: 13 December 2010 at 4:33pm
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Bikers (at least here in Boston) regularly share lanes with cars, and sometimes hit or get hit by them, yet I don't see anyone calling for widespread bike insurance. Just a thought. To some extent, people don't need to be told what to do, and I think requiring health insurance goes over the line (regardless of the fact that I am covered under a supposedly "Cadillac" health plan -- probably true since I've been to the hospital twice in my entire life, and the most expensive medical procedure I've had was my braces.) ------------- BU Engineering 2012 |
Posted By: Linus
Date Posted: 13 December 2010 at 6:11pm
You mean besides judges viewing the same exact law in different way and making legal standing based off of those laws? -------------
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Posted By: __sneaky__
Date Posted: 13 December 2010 at 6:18pm
...wait. ------------- "I AM a crossdresser." -Reb Cpl Forum Vice President RIP T&O Forum |
Posted By: agentwhale007
Date Posted: 13 December 2010 at 6:52pm
Examples?
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Posted By: Linus
Date Posted: 14 December 2010 at 10:24am
This current one? -------------
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Posted By: agentwhale007
Date Posted: 14 December 2010 at 10:42am
Oh, you mean the one that will end up going to the Supreme Court, where there is no parallel court to "make other decisions?" The one where the system of federal judges is set up and sectioned so that disagreements between judges can feed into a higher court system for really tricky things? The one that shows the system working just as it should? Cool.
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Posted By: Linus
Date Posted: 14 December 2010 at 11:19am
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Oh so you mean a 5/4 decision does not prove my point of different judges having differing views on the same law?
Nice. -------------
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Posted By: agentwhale007
Date Posted: 14 December 2010 at 11:24am
Are they part of a singular judicial seat?
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Posted By: StormyKnight
Date Posted: 15 December 2010 at 12:53am
http://amerpundit.com/2010/12/14/the-ridiculous-mandatory-auto-insurance-defense/ - http://amerpundit.com/2010/12/14/the-ridiculous-mandatory-auto-insurance-defense/
http://reason.com/blog/2010/12/14/two-more-ways-in-which-the-fed - Two More Ways in Which the Federal Health Insurance Mandate Is Not Like State Car Insurance Mandateshttp://reason.com/people/jacob-sullum - Jacob Sullum | December 14, 2010 This morning Nick Gillespie http://reason.com/blog/2010/12/14/is-medical-insurance-like-car - noted a couple of ways in which the federal health insurance mandate that U.S. District Judge Henry Hudson http://reason.com/blog/2010/12/13/federal-judge-overturns-obamac - rejected yesterday differs from state car insurance mandates: 1. Driving on public roads, unlike living, is a privilege to which the government may attach conditions. 2. Americans can avoid the car insurance requirement, but they can't avoid the health insurance requirement. As Northwestern University law professor Eugene Kontorovich puts it, "If you don't want to pay [for] car insurance, you can sell your car, but if you do not want to pay [for 'minimum essential coverage'], you have to kill yourself." The http://reason.com/blog/2010/12/13/the-crucial-role-of-choice-in - lack of choice in the latter situation—which means the regulated individuals literally have done nothing that qualifies as interstate commerce even under the broadest conception of it endorsed by the Supreme Court—was crucial to Hudson's decision. Here are two other important differences between state car insurance requirements and the federal health insurance requirement: 3. State car insurance mandates require you to buy liability insurance in case you injure other people or damage their property, while the federal health insurance mandate requires you to insure yourself against the costs associated with your own injury or disease. 4. Car insurance mandates are imposed by states, whose powers, unlike the federal government's, are not limited to those specifically enumerated in the U.S. Constitution. Although states' powers are restricted by their own constitutions and by some provisions of the U.S. Constitution (most of the guarantees in the Bill of Rights, for example), it makes no sense to talk about the limits of a state's authority to regulate interstate commerce. That last point is pretty important in assessing a decision like Hudson's, which applies the U.S. Constitution's Commerce Clause to the federal government. But it is routinely overlooked by ObamaCare's defenders (including the president), whose car insurance analogy assumes that the states and the federal government are bound by the same rules. ------------- 
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Posted By: agentwhale007
Date Posted: 17 December 2010 at 2:23pm
That's a silly hyperbole. You don't have to buy it under any penalty other than an extra tax. |
Posted By: brihard
Date Posted: 17 December 2010 at 5:47pm
When you acquire a vehicle, you've made a positive decision to accept certain extra burdens and responsibilities. In the case of healthcare, what's being infringed is a negative right not to be unduly imposed on by the government. If that tax collected were going to go to a government funded healthcare plan for all those who choose not to purchase private insurance, that might be one thing, but in this case the tax is being levied punitively against those who don't comply with the individual mandate- which, as the jurisprudence is showing, may well fail constitutional scrutiny. The point remains that the government is forcing people either to purchase health insurance or to suffer a punitive tax. Taxation is supposed to be for the purposes of raising necessary revenue; nowhere legally or morally is the state authorized to use taxes as a penalty for noncompliance. Imposing a punitive fine is generally restricted to being a legal sanction. This is, in effect, establishing a punishable offence by fiat, and moreover one lacking in due process protections or the ability to challenge it conventionally in a court of law. This isn't right. I cannot hold it to be justified for the state to compel people to pay a fine for not purchasing something simply because they're alive. It' snot at all analogous to situations where an individual has chosen of their own right to assume certain extra burdens as a result of exercising a privilege (like driving on public roads). ------------- "Abortion is not "choice" in America. It is forced and the democrats are behind it, with the goal of eugenics at its foundation." -FreeEnterprise, 21 April 2011. Yup, he actually said that. |
Posted By: agentwhale007
Date Posted: 17 December 2010 at 6:07pm
I don't believe that is the case here though, other than my poor choice of words. I believe that the tax goes to help pay for subsidized healthcare costs. Remember, I don't support the parts of the reform asking people to buy third-party healthcare either, I just think it's silly to make some sort of comparison to life-and-death, gun-to-your-hear forcing of anything. Just as silly as it is to compare this to having to get car insurance. |
Posted By: brihard
Date Posted: 17 December 2010 at 7:17pm
Regardless of what the tax goes for, the fact remains that its intent is punitive, and consequently it's an inappropriate use of the powers of taxation. If the tax is going to pay for subsidized healthcare costs, then the tax specifically funds a public good, as healthcare costs would be, to some degree, subsidized for everyone. In this instance a tax is being punitively levied on thsoe who do not get health insurance (some of the poorer demographics in America, though I recognize that the tax is waived for the lowest incomes), yet it is going to subsidize a common thing. That's an extremely regressive system of taxation, where some of the lower income are being forced to exclusively pay for a common good. Subsidized or not, paying that tax doesn't equate to having their healthcare covered. You're playing semantics in this case, but the bare facts of the matter is that the tax is a punishment for not playing ball. That's not how tax is to be used. Is it a matter of life and death? No, but when the state punitively conscripts money from you against your will, that's a pretty serious imposition on your liberty, and one that's typically reserved for cases of criminal sanction. ------------- "Abortion is not "choice" in America. It is forced and the democrats are behind it, with the goal of eugenics at its foundation." -FreeEnterprise, 21 April 2011. Yup, he actually said that. |
Posted By: agentwhale007
Date Posted: 17 December 2010 at 7:42pm
Not really, though, because:
What the tax does is help cover the costs of people who don't buy healthcare and enter into the system. Let's say Mr. Fitandhealthy chooses not to purchase healthcare, and is jogging alongside the road. While he is jogging, a Chevy Astrovan swerves off the road and plows into him, breaking both of Mr. Fitandhealthy's legs, both hip joints, a few vertebra and both collarbones. When he gets to the hospital ER, he has to be treated. He cannot be turned away. And, if he doesn't have insurance, someone is still going to have to pay for the life-saving procedures that will be done. Right now, it just gets paid for in the form of charging more for everyone else's medical costs. The taxes are put to that. Call them punitive if you want, but that's their purpose in the system. It's not a punishment system, no more than having extra taxes on cigarettes are.
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Posted By: brihard
Date Posted: 17 December 2010 at 7:58pm
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The exact words of the bill: "If an applicable individual fails to meet the requirement of subsection (a) for 1 or more months during any calendar year beginning after 2013, then, except as provided in subsection (d), there is hereby imposed a penalty with respect to the individual in the amount determined under subsection (c). " http://democrats.senate.gov/reform/patient-protection-affordable-care-act-as-passed.pdf - http://democrats.senate.gov/reform/patient-protection-affordable-care-act-as-passed.pdf Page 126 of the bill. As I stated, the intent is in fact punitive. That's an inappropriate use of the powers of taxation. Your claim conflicts directly with not only the intent, but the actual wording of the law. You cannot claim that it is not a punitive provision, when, as written in the law itself, it explicitly is phrased as such. I think you also need to read this summary of the punitive effects of the bill: http://coburn.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?a=Files.Serve&File_id=2ec1e180-afbf-4a48-ba12-8dea812ac30a - http://coburn.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?a=Files.Serve&File_id=2ec1e180-afbf-4a48-ba12-8dea812ac30a ------------- "Abortion is not "choice" in America. It is forced and the democrats are behind it, with the goal of eugenics at its foundation." -FreeEnterprise, 21 April 2011. Yup, he actually said that. |
Posted By: agentwhale007
Date Posted: 17 December 2010 at 8:06pm
So what will they be doing with the money collected? Burning it? Tossing it off a cliff? What?
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Posted By: agentwhale007
Date Posted: 17 December 2010 at 8:10pm
Inappropriate to whom though? Not the legal system. It's a taxation procedure that has held up to legal scrutiny, in the form of extra taxes on tabacco and alcohol, for a while now. |
Posted By: Linus
Date Posted: 17 December 2010 at 8:48pm
Buying and being charged taxes =/= not buying and being charged taxes. It's akin to being charged because you DON'T buy a case of beer and cigs every month. -------------
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Posted By: brihard
Date Posted: 17 December 2010 at 9:01pm
...But would that subsidize my beer? Whale- reading the decision and working on a reply. Wait out. Here's the court decision by the way. It's actually pretty interesting. http://media.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/metro/docs/Hudson_ruling.pdf?hpid=topnews - http://media.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/metro/docs/Hudson_ruling.pdf?hpid=topnews ------------- "Abortion is not "choice" in America. It is forced and the democrats are behind it, with the goal of eugenics at its foundation." -FreeEnterprise, 21 April 2011. Yup, he actually said that. |
Posted By: agentwhale007
Date Posted: 17 December 2010 at 9:05pm
Ok, but that's irrelevant to the discussion. We're talking about taxation being punitive and/or purposeful. At least that's where this discussion has wandered to.
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Posted By: agentwhale007
Date Posted: 17 December 2010 at 9:11pm
It's all good. To clarify again, we're arguing minuta on the same side of the argument. Which is fine. I just don't want it to seem like I'm a supporter of this aspect of the bill. I don't like this aspect of the health insurance reform at all. I think it's silly to go with a system where people are finagled into buying a product from a third party company - especially when it's the same third party company (Or series of companies) that's helped screw up the U.S. healthcare system in the first place. We should either run it like full subsidy - like the quite efficient "food stamps" program - or we nationalize it and run it as an invested public insurance. But, instead, we get a hodgepodge mess. |
Posted By: brihard
Date Posted: 17 December 2010 at 9:19pm
It's irrelevant what they do with it. The money is collected in a matter outside the constitutional powers of the government, according to the Virginia decision. They are, essentially, taxing passive inaction, and using that tax to punitive effect. Your shift of subject just ignores the very valid objections I've brought up rather than dealing with them in any substance. Though, in answer to your question, the revenue generated will simply land in the general treasury, it's not earmarked for anything specific.
False. The current law on the matter is the case law set out in the Virginia decision, which explicitly finds the individual mandate and the enforcement thereof to be unconstitutional. Your analogy fails on a very significant ground. Choosing to buy tobacco or to buy alcohol is a positive exercise. Like driving a car in public, you are choosing to actively do something that was not strictly necessary, and so you are subject to a reasonably imposed burden- paying taxes, in some cases, buying insurance (to protect OTHERS from your liability, note) in the other. The Feds in the Virginia case have attempted to characterize, in the words of the court, 'passive inactivity' as an act that is significant to interstate commerce, and moreover one which is significant enough to justify an imposition by the state simply for exercising a negative right, or more properly a liberty. The case of the federal government rests on this conception of not buying something as contributing to 'interstate commerce' which of course invokes that clause of the constitution, as well as the 'necessary and proper' clause that enables much congressional action. Read through the court's decision- it bounces rather a lot, but at the end the judge very, very elegantly ties it all together, rules the regulation of minimum care outside the constitutional powers of the federal government, and consequently strikes down the penalty component of it, and severs the impugned section (and those dependent on it) from the rest of the law. Constitutional law can be kinda fun. That was a neat decision to read. ------------- "Abortion is not "choice" in America. It is forced and the democrats are behind it, with the goal of eugenics at its foundation." -FreeEnterprise, 21 April 2011. Yup, he actually said that. |
Posted By: agentwhale007
Date Posted: 17 December 2010 at 9:43pm
And what of the other federal judges who have upheld the things found unconstitutional by Hudson to be constitutional? If you're saying Hudson disagrees with it, that's something. But if you're going to base the taxations constitutionality on just that case, you'd be incorrect. We'll need to wait and see what the Supreme Court does with this before either one of us can rightfully say that it's constitutional or unconstitutional, and the punitive vs. purposefulness of the imposed tax. |