This week, the Supreme Court will take up its historic three-day consideration of the health care law. My Supreme Court class will be spending two weeks on the four insular issues before the Court, including the question of federalism.
For a prior column on my view of the federalism question, click here.
As I have previously noted, it is not simply Justice Kennedy but Justice Scalia that will be the focus of attention in these oral arguments. In order to support the states, Scalia will have to distinguish past statements embracing broad interpretations of federal jurisdiction. For all intents and purposes, this could be an argument before a court of two with the parties striving to lock in both Scalia and Kennedy.
It is a closer case because of the refusal of Justice Kagan to recuse herself. I have previously said that I believe there are strong arguments to be made for such recusal by Kagan. If the Administration prevails, her participation will always be viewed in history as problematic by many.
I have stated before that I believe that the cases favor Congress in the lower courts, but that there is strong precedent on both sides. Obviously, both challenging the law are emphasizing United States v. Lopez, 514 U.S. 549, 115 S. Ct. 1624, 131 L. Ed. 2d 626 (1995) and United States v. Morrison, 529 U.S. 598, 120 S. Ct. 1740, 146 L. Ed. 2d 658 (2000). The Court stated in Morrison that it would not accept “the argument that Congress may regulate noneconomic, violent criminal conduct based solely on the conduct’s aggregate effect on interstate commerce.” Id. at 617. In Lopez, the Court required more than what Professor Fried appears to demand in the nexus to support federal authority. In striking down the Gun-Free School Zones Act, the Court found that the claim could not be sustained “under our cases upholding regulations of activities that arise out of or are connected with a commercial transaction, which viewed in the aggregate, substantially affects interstate commerce.” Lopez, 514 U.S. at 561. Again, the question as stated by Chief Justice Marshall is whether this claim conforms with “the letter and spirit of the constitution.”
As I have stated, people of good faith can disagree on these points and the matter cannot be fully resolved until put before the Supreme Court. Most people anticipate that Justice Kennedy will be the swing vote on a close decision. In both Lopez and Morrison, Kennedy voted to strike down the laws. However, in his concurrence, Kennedy did note that the history and language of the Constitution “counsels great restraint before the Court determines that the Clause is insufficient to support an exercise of the national power.” Moreover, Kennedy did vote to uphold the Controlled Substances Act in Gonzalez v. Raich, 545 U.S. 1 (2005). He agreed that, absent the authority, Congress could not regulate drugs. I am frankly not convinced that the same nexus can be established here.
There is also some question over Justice Scalia’s view since he also concurred in Raich. In that decision, Scalia noted that “[u]nlike the power to regulate activities that have a substantial effect on interstate commerce, the power to enact laws enabling effective regulation of interstate commerce can only be exercised in conjunction with congressional regulation of an interstate market, and it extends only to those measures necessary to make the interstate regulation effective. . . . Congress may regulate noneconomic intrastate activities only where the failure to do so “could … undercut” its regulation of interstate commerce.” However, he also found that “[t]his is not a power that threatens to obliterate the line between “what is truly national and what is truly local emphasis added.”
I view the health care legislation as presenting a new type of federal claim and one that could leave few things as protected by federalism by expanding Congress’ enumerated powers to an unprecedented scope.
The notion that forcing people to pay private sharks has anything to do with the New Deal or with helping those unable to defend themselves is a sad twisted comment on just how far people will bend their “lying eyes” to see what they want. It’s right up there with insisting that “creationism” is based on science.
If one looks at how many top level bankers have gone to jail for patently illegal acts against homeowners, or at how private insurance companies have laughed at scant regulations and raised the cost of health insurance through the roof in Massachusetts (now that people are forced to buy insurance from them) , one will get an idea of just what sort of “historic” an event this judicial ruling will be.
This court is made up of the most conservative, corporate friendly justices ever assembled in one room since the gilded age. That they are virtually guaranteed to support the individual mandate should provide a strong hint as to what sort of history is being made here.
FIREFLY, thankyou for reminding everyone that: “The primary goal of a PRIVATE, FOR-PROFIT insurance company is to make a PROFIT.”
You are so right that FOR-PROFIT health insurance companies are mainly interested in short term goals, profits for shareholders, and high salaries and bonuses for CEOs. Healthcare to its customers is not the priority that it should be.
In my experience, for-profit in medicine can come down to making profits by denial of needed care – that, to me, is UNETHICAL!
I am a family physician and I am so grateful that President Obama has been able to put the brakes on the for-profit health insurance industry.
I pray that Obamacare, or something like it, is declared constitutional for the common good of all patients in this wonderful country of ours.
I had the opportunity to do several years of training in Ireland and England.
It was great to be able to focus on the needs of the patients, rather than on what their insurance would NOT COVER.
It is important for the physician to have time to hear the patient’s story. In for-profit medicine, productivity is demanded of the doctor to an inhuman degree. Even excellent emergency room doctors have lost their jobs because they were not seeing enough “heads-per-hour”. How can we give quality care when we, as physicians, are under such pressure to please the employer by number counts of patients seen?
In my experience, for-profit does not belong in medicine. Any profit needs to go back into improving patient care and not to stockholders and CEOs.
Sincerely, Dr Rosemary Eileen McHugh, M.D.,M.B.A., Chicago, Illinois
There was a very intersting segment on c span last night about the Supreme Court and its building, people, judges, library. They interviewed some of the Justices and a discussion about questioning during oral arguments was featured for a short while. Justice Thomas, who is somewhat ridiculed by the scotusblog folks for not asking questions in oral argument, was very articulate and his reasoning made a lot of sense. Rather than interrupt, interupt, interrupt, each judge in sequence, let the attorneys say their piece.
Alito, Kagan and the others who were so proud of their ability to interrupt looked a but egotistic. A judge should not have to pin down one attorney on some point and say AHA! It is if they are a bit insecure and a bit dumb.
Give the lawyers their day in court: Let em talk.
TalkinDog
Can Texas make me eat broccoli?
Joey Fishkin
One of the fascinating things about the constitutional battle of the coming week is how much argument and agitation is going on outside the Court—and how disconnected much of it is with anything going on inside the Court. And yet there are many subtle connections between the popular and judicial conversations. I wonder, for instance, whether part of the reason courts evaluating the ACA have talked so much about the commerce power, and so little about the power to tax (which to my mind is at least as strong an argument for the ACA’s constitutionality), has to do with the fact that the public, political battle about the ACA has been joined in terms of commerce, not taxation.
Outside the courts, one huge argument is if the government can make you buy insurance, can it make you eat broccoli? This argument seems to have a lot of rhetorical bite. But the most straightforward response is the question in the title of this post. Can your state government make you eat broccoli? If the answer is no, as it surely is, then there must be some reason, other than limits on federal power, why that is so. The most likely reason is that states force-feeding us vegetables would violate fundamental liberty interests protected by the Fourteenth Amendment.
In other words, the “broccoli argument” does its rhetorical work by turning a question of Congressional power into a question of individual liberty. And that, in microcosm, is what the entire public debate about the health care law is about, and why that public debate differs so much from the debate at the Court. Few people other than Mitt Romney really believe that it is perfectly fine for states to pass an individual mandate, yet unconstitutional for Congress to do so. That position—pure federalism, drained of all libertarian talk of personal freedom—simply does not have the political heft it needs in order to be a winning argument. And so opponents of the ACA marry federalism to individual liberty in a way that leaves them in the odd position of suggesting that if Congress has the power under the Commerce Clause to pass the individual mandate, then it could make you eat broccoli… in which case, Texas could pass a statute and force me to eat broccoli right now.
One of the things I will be watching for this week is the degree to which any Justices who are skeptical of the ACA find ways to make their arguments resonate with the arguments against the law out in the public sphere—which means getting beyond commerce and enumerated powers and speaking in terms of individual liberty.
Balkanization
The primary goal of a PRIVATE, FOR-PROFIT insurance company is to make a PROFIT.
IF, after making a PROFIT for the shareholders and paying the high salaries and bonuses today’s CEOs “require,” the insurance company can still “afford” to provide some healthcare to its customers, it will do so, if grudgingly.
The government-run Medicare program, on the other hand, is NOT supposed to make a profit but IS supposed to try to keep the American people healthy, alive, and able to be as independent and productive as possible.
Without exaggeration, the final ruling has the potential to be the most important declaration on how the Constitution divides up power between national and state governments since the New Deal days some three quarters of a century ago. Without exaggeration, it could be the most important pronouncement on the federal “safety net” since the Social Security Act was upheld by the Court in 1937. Without exaggeration, a decision to strike down all or part of the new health law could be the most severe rebuff of Congress’s power over the national economy since the Sick Chicken Case in 1935. And, without exaggeration, a nullification of the Act in whole or in part could be the most devastating blow to presidential power and prestige since the Steel Seizure Case in 1952.
The law at issue is not directly about civil rights, but for the nation’s working poor, the coming ruling on the law’s validity could be as important to them as a 1938 decision was for racial minorities, essentially starting the modern civil rights revolution. And for individuals who want to be left alone by their government, the final decision may be a reminder of a 1905 decision that first spelled out a theory of individual liberty that, in time, would contribute importantly decades afterward to that same civil rights revolution.
Yes, it is that important — at least in potential. Whether or not it lives up to that potential may depend, to a significant degree, on how the Justices react to the 90-minute argument that opens the week on Monday. Many observers, and certainly most of the media, have been waiting most eagerly for Tuesday’s two-hour argument, when the biggest cog in the entire machinery of the Affordable Care Act, the individual mandate, is up for review. From Lyle Denniston at SCOTUS blog
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/jurisprudence/2012/03/the_supreme_court_is_more_concerned_with_the_politics_of_the_health_care_debate_than_the_law_.html
I don’t agree with the principle behind socialized health care programs such as Medicare or Medicaid. But what we have in those programs are federal programs funded by federal tax dollars.
With Obamacare, we are establishing the precedent of legally requiring U.S. citizens to engage in business transactions with privately owned companies operating in a particular industry, in this initial case, the health insurance industry.
This is simply not right.
Sorry for the typos, I had meant to write Medicare and Obamacare.
Medicare and Obamacare are two quite different mandates.
Yes, one has to pay for insurance in both; but with Medicare, premium costs, medical coverage and payments for medical services are ALL controlled by the government. That is NOT the case with Obamacare. With Obamacare, the “customer” is required to buy insurance from a PRIVATE, PROFIT-MAKING company with no protection that: (1) the costs for that insurance will be kept in bounds, or (2) the insurer will pay for medical procedures the “customer” needs to stay healthy and/or alive.
As I said, medicare and Obama care two very different kinds of program.
Obamacare and the Supreme Court
A guide to the health-care case
Mar 26th 2012, 11:48 by C.H. | NEW YORK
BARACK OBAMA signed his health reform into law on March 23rd, 2010. Within minutes Florida’s attorney-general had filed suit against the law, along with 12 other states. Since then they have been joined by the National Federation of Independent Business, four private individuals and 13 additional states. Starting today the Supreme Court will hear their case. A decision is expected by the end of June.
Most political brawls are drummed-up follies, but the fight over health-care reform is legitimately historic. The law is the biggest achievement of Barack Obama’s presidency. If it survives, Democrats say, it will expand and transform American health care. Republicans, though, see it as a government intrusion into private affairs. If the law is upheld, they say, no area of American life will be safe.
America’s highest court usually devotes one hour to arguments. For this case it will devote six hours, spread over three days. The Economist has a seat for the proceedings; we’ll be posting our thoughts on Wednesday, and a detailed story will appear in next week’s issue. In the meantime, here is a guide to the arguments.
Reams have been written about the case. This guide attempts to provide a simplified summary. Readers hungry for additional information should visit the American Bar Association, the SCOTUS blog and the ACA Litigation blog, which are stocked with briefs and other resources. C-SPAN has a video of a great debate between Paul Clement (the lawyer for the states), Mike Carvin (the lawyer for the National Federation of Independent Business), Neal Katyal (a former Solicitor General) and Akhil Amar (a constitutional law professor at Yale).
QUESTIONS BEFORE THE COURT
There are four issues before the Supreme Court. Attention has centred on the constitutionality of the “individual mandate”, which requires most Americans to buy health insurance or pay a penalty. However there are three other questions before the court, two that are procedural and one that is substantive: whether the case must wait until 2015, after the mandate takes effect; whether the rest of the law must fall if the individual mandate is struck down; and whether the law coerces states to expand Medicaid, the health programme for the poor.
MONDAY: DECIDE NOW OR LATER?
Question: Does the Anti-Injunction Act prevent the court from deciding this case until 2015? The court has granted 90 minutes for arguments on this topic.
Background: The Anti-Injunction Act of 1867 bars court challenges to taxes before those taxes have been levied. The individual mandate will go into effect in 2014. Those who fail to buy insurance will pay their first penalty in 2015.
Mr Obama’s argument: This is the rare instance in which Mr Obama and the states agree, albeit for different reasons. Mr Obama’s lawyers want the court to decide the case now, arguing that Congress did not intend the law’s “penalty” to be treated as a tax under the Anti-Injunction Act.
Challengers’ argument: The case should be decided now. The health law assesses a “penalty”, not a tax. Furthermore, the suit challenges the mandate itself, not the penalty. The Anti-Injunction Act bars a person from suing, but it does not bar a state from doing so.
Court-appointed lawyer’s argument: Because neither the challengers nor Mr Obama want a decision to be delayed, the court appointed a lawyer to argue that the case should wait until 2015. Robert Long, of Covington and Burling, contends that the court should not rule on a constitutional matter until it is compelled to do so, that is, after the tax has been levied.
Analysis: The government’s argument here is among its most confusing. Mr Obama’s lawyers argue that the penalty falls within Congress’s power to tax, but the penalty should not be treated as a tax under the Anti-Injunction Act. Nevertheless, only one appellate court, in Virginia, ruled that the suit must wait until 2015.
TUESDAY: THE INDIVIDUAL MANDATE
Question: May Congress mandate the purchase of health insurance and penalise those who fail to obey? The court will spend two hours hearing arguments on this topic.
Background: America’s health-care market has clear failings. In 2009 50m people without insurance bought health care they could not pay for. This shifted costs to those with insurance, in the form of higher fees. Meanwhile insurers may raise rates or deny coverage to the sick. The Democrats’ health law attempts to remedy these problems, among others. The poor receive subsidised insurance. Those who can afford insurance are required to buy it. Those who disobey are assessed a small penalty. According to Democrats, requiring insurance for the healthy will balance the cost of insuring the sick. Those who buy insurance will no longer subsidise those who do not.
Mr Obama’s argument: The constitution’s commerce clause authorises Congress to regulate health care, an industry that accounts for nearly 18% of America’s GDP. The health law seeks to expand insurance coverage and lower the cost of care. The individual mandate is a necessary, proper way to meet the law’s goals. The law does not regulate inactivity, as the states contend. Not buying insurance is an economic decision to pay for your own health care. Given that millions of Americans buy more health care than they can pay for, the decision to self-insure has a substantive effect on interstate commerce. Furthermore, the mandate’s penalty falls within Congress’s power to tax.
Challengers’ argument: The mandate is an unprecedented expansion of Congress’s power, “a revolution in the relationship between the central government and the governed.” The commerce clause authorises Congress to regulate economic activity. It does not authorise Congress to regulate economic inactivity. Allow this mandate and Congress may require Americans to eat broccoli or buy cars to support Detroit’s carmakers. The government’s insistence that the penalty is a tax is undermined by Democrats’ constant assertion, in 2009, that the penalty is nothing of the kind. Furthermore, the states are challenging the mandate, not the penalty.
Analysis: Two federal courts of appeals, in Ohio and Washington, DC, upheld the mandate. One federal court of appeals, the Eleventh Circuit, overturned it. The Supreme Court agreed to hear the appeal from the Eleventh Circuit. Working in Mr Obama’s favour is a recent case, Gonzalez v Raich, in which the Supreme Court ruled that Congress could criminalise an individual’s growth of medical marijuana for personal use. Antonin Scalia, a conservative justice, wrote: “Congress may regulate even noneconomic local activity if that regulation is a necessary part of a more general regulation of interstate commerce.”
WEDNESDAY: “SEVERABILITY”
Question: If the individual mandate falls, must the rest of the law fall too? The court will devote 90 minutes to this argument.
Background: The mandate is the most prominent piece of Mr Obama’s health reform. However the law is gargantuan. Its 2,700 pages cover everything from calorie counts on menus to drug rebates for the elderly.
Mr Obama’s argument: Should the mandate be overturned, only two other provisions should fall with it. The reform requires insurers to cover those with pre-existing conditions and bars them from hiking fees for the ill. Mr Obama’s lawyers concede that the mandate is necessary for these requirements to work—without the mandate, individuals would simply wait until they got sick to buy insurance. This would prove disastrous for insurers. However the rest of the law should stand. The states may not fight provisions of the health law that do not apply to them.
Challengers’ argument: Health reform sought to achieve near universal health coverage without increasing the deficit. The mandate was the main way to do this, but the entire law served this goal. If the mandate falls, the entire law should fall, too.
Court-appointed lawyer’s argument: The Supreme Court appointed an impartial lawyer, Bartow Farr, to argue that the rest of the law should remain if the mandate falls. Mr Farr contends that the provisions outside of the mandate are “perfectly lawful”. Congress would rather have the law without the mandate than no health law at all.
Analysis: The insurance industry supported the law because of the mandate. The requirement that individuals buy insurance balanced the myriad, onerous rules on insurers. The Eleventh Circuit’s ruling was insurers’ worst nightmare. The appellate court struck down the mandate but upheld every other part of the law.
WEDNESDAY: MEDICAID
Question: Is Congress’s expansion of Medicaid unduly coercive to the states? The court will hear one hour of arguments on this topic.
Background: Medicaid provides health care to the poor. It is paid for by both the federal government and the states. However Washington foots most of the bill, providing 50% to 83% of funding for each state’s Medicaid programme. Beginning in 2014, the health law will expand Medicaid to childless adults with incomes of up to 138% of the federal poverty line.
Mr Obama’s argument: This is not the first time that the federal government has expanded eligibility for Medicaid. The government may attach requirements to the aid that it provides. Strike down this expansion as coercive and other federal requirements would be similarly vulnerable. Besides, the federal government will pay for most of the expansion—100% in 2014, tapering to 90% by 2020.
Challengers’ argument: The law’s expansion of Medicaid is unduly coercive. Technically, states could refuse the government’s new terms for Medicaid. But the federal government’s support for Medicaid is so large that refusing Washington’s help is impractical. States have no choice but to acquiesce to the government’s terms, even though they are strapped for cash.
Analysis: No lower court sided with the states, making this challenge the least likely to succeed. However the Supreme Court surprised observers by agreeing to hear this issue in the first place, so another surprise may come in June.
From The Economist
S.Mom, I like my SS check every month. I’d probably be on the street if I didn’t have it. Hope I never have to use the medicare.
What Firefly said.
D.S., We also have trouble getting appropriate diagnosis in a timely fashion. Sometimes it’s b/c we can’t pay for it, sometimes it’s due to md incompetence. Sometimes we just have to be persistent in finding the right dr.
It took me years to get relief for something that was finally fixed after treatment for an incorrect diagnosis. A brother-in-law finally got a correct diagnosis when he relocated and refused to give his new dr. access to previous records. New dr. ran tests until he found that it was too much potassium. A previous dr. had diagnosed gout and subsequent drs just treated him for gout w/o effect. Both of us had excellent insurance.
Don’t you also have the right to pay for treatment if you’re not satisfied with the free stuff?
It’s ludicrous in the extreme to imagine that the Supreme Court would reject a law that codifies fealty to corporate hegemons and indemnfies their profligacy with mandatory tribute. That government will do the leg breaking on behalf of private enterprise and then charge the mark (citizen) for that “collection service” through taxation of the victims themselves positively makes them salivate with anticipation for future uses of the model, usually referred to as fascism.
Lucky they have those black robes. It’s gonna be pretty sticky in there for the next few days.
If Medicare Is OK, Obamacare Should Be Too
Jonathan Cohn
March 22, 2012 | 11:13 pm
The lawyers challenging the Affordable Care Act will offer many arguments next week, when they make their case in front of the U.S. Supreme Court. But their most central claim is that the law is “unprecedented”—that it represents “a revolution in the relationship between the central government and the governed.”
As they tell it, the requirement that nearly everybody obtain insurance, or pay a penalty to the government, forces people to pay for something they might not want or need. The constitution, they say, does not “empower Congress to seize control over decisions so basic as to how the people spend their money.”
Put aside, for a moment, the fine distinctions of the interstate commerce clause and other constitutional matters the court must ponder. In principle, is the basic obligation that comes with health care reform—to pay for a mutual protection scheme that some individuals might not find advantageous or desirable—really so novel?
Hardly. It’s an obligation most of us meet on a regular basis, every time we get a paycheck.
I’m speaking, of course, about Social Security and Medicare. Each program is a form of “social insurance” and each serves the same basic function: To protect us from financial shocks that we cannot anticipate or avoid. With Social Security, the shock is reaching retirement without enough income. With Medicare, the shock is high medical bills during old age. During our working years, we pay into these programs by handing over portions of our incomes, in the form of payroll taxes. And we don’t have a choice about it, unless we want to start evading taxes.
The Affordable Care Act is also a form of social insurance. It, too, seeks to protect us from problems that we cannot anticipate or avoid: Illness or accident before we turn 65. To get that protection, we must contribute towards its cost—by obtaining a qualified health plan on our own or, failing that, paying a fee to the government. The government then uses that fee to finance the provision of health care services for those who couldn’t pay for it on their own. The obligation is, if anything, less onerous than the one for Medicare and Social Security. By law, the government cannot impose criminal penalties on people who fail to meet the mandate. The worst the government can do is withhold future tax refunds.
So why is the Affordable Care Act such an unconscionable infringement of liberty, while those two other, more revered programs are not? Some critics have suggested the Affordable Care Act is fundamentally unfair, because it effectively requires relatively healthy people to subsidize relatively unhealthy people. But that is true of Medicare and Social Security, too. The whole point of any social insurance is to ameliorate the impact of sheer chance on life—whether it’s being born with the wrong genes, growing up in the wrong neighborhood, or coming into contact with the wrong physical threats. Social insurance programs redistribute funds from the lucky to the unlucky, on the very sensible theory that any one of us could end up unlucky (and, at one point or another in our lives, probably will).
A truer distinction is that Medicare and Social Security are real government programs: The bureaucracies that run Medicare and Social Security actually distribute the benefits, in the form of checks or payments to health care providers. The Affordable Care Act is a more privatized system, in which private insurance companies are the direct financiers of benefits for many people. But even that distinction is blurrier than it might seem. Medicare has long offered beneficiaries the option of enrolling in private insurance plans, rather than the government-run program. And today about a quarter of all beneficiaries do just that. Those companies operate under close government supervision and regulation, it’s true. But so will the companies offering insurance through the Affordable Care Act.
Where the Affordable Care Act clearly differs from Medicare is in the alternative it lacks: Under the Affordable Care Act, many people won’t have the option of any public program at all. Their only choice will be private insurance, through a job or through the market place. This is a bug, not a feature, as far as liberals like me are concerned. But it’s difficult to see why conservatives would believe this makes the law more intrusive than Medicare or Social Security. The idea behind channeling coverage through private insurance, and the rationale behind excluding a public plan from the options, is to allow the free market more room to operate.
Conservatives should know this better than anybody, because they have spent a generation making this argument and lobbying to privatize all social insurance. They’re the ones who keep trying to transform Medicare into a voucher system. They’re the ones who talk about replacing Social Security with a system of private investment accounts. But if it’s wrong to make obtain private health insurance for when they are under 65, why is it ok to make people obtain private health insurance for when they are over 65—or build retirement pensions by depositing money into private equities?
Constitutionally, the differences among these programs may matter. The legal justification for Medicare and Social Security comes from the federal government’s power to levy taxes. And even some judges who have ruled in the favor of the Affordable Care Act have said (wrongly, in my view) the government cannot make that claim, because advocates didn’t use the term enough when debating the law.
But insofar as the legal case against the Affordable Care Act rests upon a broader argument about liberty, it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense—unless the critics of health care reform are ready to junk Medicare and Social Security too. Something tells me they’re not.
The idea the govt can force people to buy insurance is dangerous. If I read Mr. Turley in the past correctly he isn’t far from that view, because what will they force you to do next? America’s health care system is broken because of so much intervention by govt into it, short of universal health care which I have here in Canada which is slow, costs way to much and delivers less every year, America should consider removing all federal medical program’s and allowing it to be a state issue. My mother who has had severe pain in her abdomen for months went to the doctor 3 times to complain that something was wrong was told repeatedly it was just menopause. Finally after enough complaining she was granted an x-ray, the results were a mass in her left abdomen. She had to wait over 3 months for a CT scan, to find out if she had a potentially cancerous mass on her abdomen. Now while Americas health care system is broken due to govt intervention, and inflation, I would have much rather seen her go to the states and pay someone to have her diagnosed in a more timely fashion. Believe me when I say health care is not only rationed it continuously cut. Socialized medicine does not work, and the new law is merely a step toward it, and I believe a dangerous one.
As I see it, the problem is not that the government forces everyone to buy insurance but that it forces everyone to buy insurance from a PRIVATE, PROFIT-MAKING company.
And, then, if one does not buy that (assuredly, over-priced) insurance product, the government will step in and FINE the person for not buying the product.
Who needs good advertising-copy writers when an industry has the government acting like its ENFORCER, leveling crippling fines on anyone unwilling to buy some over-priced (and crappy) product?
I was listening to the line up of attorneys….. One sticks out is Clement…..
If I recall….. The issue is not ripe…… Seems to be another Marbury moment……
This is an easy one to guess. ACA will make a ton of money for the insurance industry so the little 4, the corporate representatives on the court like Scalia & Kennedy will be in favor of it. One or two of the rational actors will side with them & is done.
“As I have stated, people of good faith can disagree on these points and the matter cannot be fully resolved until put before the Supreme Court.”
They are looking at it closely, if the hours of oral argument allowed is any indication.