This just on the wire: The Supreme Court has accepted cert in the health care litigation. The resulting decision could have sweeping implication for the future of federalism in this country.
In my view, this case is more about federalism than health care. When I spoke to Congress about the care health care law, I encouraged them to re-write the mandatory health care provision to avoid a challenge over federalism. However, particularly with the death of Sen. Ted Kennedy, the Democratic leadership insisted on muscling through the legislation on the thinnest of margins. No matter how you feel about national health care, that is not the way to begin such a massive program. Now a majority of states oppose the law. I share their concerns over federalism, as discussed in prior columns and blogs.
Bob, Esq.,
Good point….
Hey, I hope you are recovering well….
For those above trying to drag mandatory automobile liability insurance (which itself is an utter perversion of the very concept of liability insurance) into the debate, there are multiple reasons why these are not at all the same issue. Full response is here: http://open.salon.com/blog/the_ox/2009/09/20/the_tax_that_isnt_a_taxbecause_its_something_else
Excerpt:
First, not “just about everybody in America” has to get auto insurance. Many do, but not most everybody. Kids don’t. Non-drivers don’t. The blind don’t. Non-car owners in many large cities don’t. And there’s still a state or two that doesn’t require it, or at least which have no mechanisms to enforce it. (None should require it as it perverts the entire concept of liability insurance and turns it on its head. But that’s an argument for another time.)
Second, driving is a privilege. It can be revoked. No one has to have a car. A car is not an inseparable and intrinsic part of self. Being alive and having a body that may need care is not at all the same as owning a car that may need repair. One is a convenience. The other is potentially life or death.
Third, when you mandate by law that I or anyone else fork over a significant portion of our income to private, for profit insurers who then take 20 percent or more off of the top and pay their executive’s obscene salaries, then yeah, you are effectively granting the power of taxation to corporations.
They are so brazen they have not even tried to keep it a secret. I saw the story on the evening news tonight. Of course, it will get a big yawn from the average low information voter, aka, Fox News viewers.
Shano,
That is an amazing story. I had not seen it. Corruption has no limits.
http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-pn-scalia-thomas-20111114,0,7978224.story
Here is the corruption of the Supreme court.:
“The day the Supreme Court gathered behind closed doors to consider the politically divisive question of whether it would hear a challenge to President Obama’s healthcare law, two of its justices, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas, were feted at a dinner sponsored by the law firm that will argue the case before the high court.
The lawyer who will stand before the court and argue that the law should be thrown out is likely to be Paul Clement, who served as U.S. solicitor general during the George W. Bush administration.
Clement’s law firm, Bancroft PLLC, was one of almost two dozen firms that helped sponsor the annual dinner of the Federalist Society, a longstanding group dedicated to advocating conservative legal principles. Another firm that sponsored the dinner, Jones Day, represents one of the trade associations that challenged the law, the National Federation of Independent Business.
Another sponsor was pharmaceutical giant Pfizer Inc, which has an enormous financial stake in the outcome of the litigation. The dinner was held at a Washington hotel hours after the court’s conference over the case. In attendance was, among others, Mitch McConnell, the Senate’s top Republican and an avowed opponent of the healthcare law.
The featured guests at the dinner? Scalia and Thomas.”
Furious. Incredible. Outrageous.
Lotta,
You are correct that the majority is being ignored. Maybe the OWS movement can help that situation.
Blouise, we are in the majority on this issue. The majority view on the major issues of the day is simply being ignored by our elected elites. I am continuously amazed at how completely irrelevant the majority desires and concerns from the citizenry has become in the nations policy making. Dan Siegal, an ex-advisor to Mayor Quan (he resigned as a show of no support this morning) is on the tube explaining that removing the Oakland protesters was brought about by the persistent hostility of conservative members of the City Council and some of the members of the local Chamber of Commerce. The House spent today naming Post Offices according to Maddow. The irony is crushing.
“I too am glad it’s being challenged but my objection is that the mandate requires a commercial third-party that gets to rake off a profit. If the insurance industry wasn’t so obviously corrupt there would be little need for medical care reform, putting them into the reformed process as a profit-taking, superfluous bureaucratic layer is ridiculous.” (lotta)
YES!!
The economics of the insurance reform are kind of murky to me but as I understand it there will be a government (taxpayer) subsidy of the cost of the cost of the insurance. There will be a cap for the individual (below a certain earning ceiling) and the taxpayer will pick up the rest of the cost – possibly to a pre-set maximum. My insurance coverage is being raised by 51% @month (190$) in cost in January. I’m wondering if massive increases in private insurance is going to be the rule in anticipation of maxing out the oncoming subsidy by changing (increasing) the baseline cost of insurance over the next year or two? I thought that this might happen. Am I the only one taking a hit next year?
While I would prefer Medicare for all, Medicare Part’s B, C, and D are also handled through private insurance and have deductibles and minimum/threshold pay-in by the insured. They can run into a bunch of money. Government health care should be completely divorced from the private insurance industry IMO.