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Judge Declares Federal Healthcare Plan (Partly) Unconstitutional
healeyb writes "In a surprise move, US District Judge Henry E. Hudson issued a ruling today that the universal healthcare law that was pushed through by the Obama administration is unconstitutional. Specifically, he invalidated the section of the law that requires all citizens to purchase healthcare insurance, arguing that it does not fall under the purview of Commerce Clause of the Constitution, as has been asserted by the government. The ruling represents the first major setback for President Barack Obama on an issue that will likely end up at the Supreme Court. Two other courts have shot down challenges to the law."
The same guy that went after Michael Mann and others after it was thrown out. He's a young Republican with an agenda that he's forcing down everyone's throat since day one. From trying to change the state seal (it has a mammary in it!) to just stating that "Homosexuality is wrong."
I'm not saying he's right or wrong in this matter (the judge seemed to agree with him) but he's one of those guys and he's a state Attorney General for Virginia pushing his conservative agenda to a national level.
My work here is dung.
Too bad "unconstitutional" is only defined by which party has the bench packed at the Supreme Court, currently
Oh really? Anyone who at least didn't question the constitutionality of this really (regardless of where you end up standing) needs to get a clue.
How can it possibly be constitutional to force someone sitting at home who has no insurance to leave that home, to forcibly purchase anything? It is like forcing a license to live.
While I think it foolish not to purchase said insurance if possible, I cannot see anyway to legally compel this action by force.
"It seems that we are at the age where life stops giving us things, and starts taking them away..." Indiana Jones
The odd aspect of the current plan is that you can be compelled by law, just by dint of being a citizen, to purchase a product from a private company.
If it was an across-the-board tax for across-the-board health coverage it'd clearly be constitutional. But for some reason we have to keep cutting in a for-profit industry that adds no real value to the process and pretend that's better than having the government pool the cash and disburse it as necessary to doctors.
They actually found a worse solution than socialism to the problem.
Only in the US is healthcare a privilege instead of a human right. That so many in a 'civilized' country are opposed to universal healthcare should make people wonder if the term 'civilized' is appropriate at all.
"I use a Mac because I'm just better than you are."
Long story short: it starts in the corporate boardroom, and ends in a room full of senators on a pile of hookers and blow.
...ask yourself who this is actually a victory for. After all, this was only a ruling against a part of the law, not the entire thing. And this was really the part that was the biggest corporate hand-out of the bill - had a real liberal written it we would have seen a single-payer option instead of forcing people to give more money to large corporations.
So in other words, if this part goes, and the rest stays, what are we left with? A bunch of smaller corporate hand-outs that don't fix much of anything in a horrendously broken system. Most people will still have the shitty insurance they already have, and they will see their costs continue to rise the same way that they would have if nothing at all had happened.
So whether it goes away - in part or in entirety - or not, we still have a crappy broken system. Maybe, just maybe - if we are really truly fortunate - this will motive our politicians to actually write a bill that addresses some of the existing problems and then hold an honest discussion on that.
But I suspect at this rate I (and anyone currently reading this) will be dead before that happens in the US.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
The house essentially creates the law, and must pass it. It then goes to the senate which can revise it. In practice these tend to go on at the same time. Once it passes the house and the senate, the president can pass or veto it (veto only makes it require a larger margin).
In the US (and other common law countries) laws can be ruled unconstitutional by the judiciary. Should a law be challenged and get high enough, it can essentially be repealed by the supreme court.
Great Intellect...
I think the only part of the story that is flamebait is the editorial statement "In a surprise move."
This is NOT a surprise move. The individual mandate has been widely debated by academics and lawyers with many dissenting viewpoints. It was pretty much inevitable that at some point a portion of the bill (and most likely the individual mandate) would end up in front of a judge who didn't find it licit, and that it would end up in front of the supreme court.
I would bet anything that President Obama and and most of the people behind the health care bill were certain that it would at some point be reviewed by SCOTUS.
.complaining about activist judges in 3...2... ...no? Really?
At a very rudimentary level . . . A bill can be introduced in either the Senate or the House of Representatives. After being passed in one, it must then be passed by the other before it is sent to the President, who can sign the bill into law or veto it. If one chamber has added amendments that the other didn't, or if the two chambers have passed bills that are similar but not exactly the same, then the differences must be worked out by a conference committee and the compromise bill re-passed before it can be signed.
Any law can be challenged as being unconstitutional - you just need somebody with standing to file the appropriate suit in the appropriate court.
The judge is not "messing with the law", he is making a judgment on whether or not it violates the Constitution.
Slightly disreputable, albeit gregarious
Anyone with a memory better than a gold fish can laugh with me as I recall that insurance mandates were originally the Republican plan. Republicans loved the idea of a mandate, and Democrats hated it.
Now? The Democrats folded like a cheap suit, gave the Republicans what they had been calling for for 15 years, and suddenly the Republicans hate the idea of a mandate.
The US has three equal branches of government at State and Federal level. At the Federal level they'd be Executive (President), Legislative (Congress - House and Senate) and Judicial (Federal Courts, Appeals Courts other misc courts and the United States Supreme Court).
The two houses of Congress have to agree on a bill, the President can sign or veto. Then its a law. However a challenge or appeal can be filed, which is happening in 19 or states, this case is the second or third one of these challenges and is the first one upheld by a Federal Court.
Now this will go to a Federal Appeals Court and may end up at the United States Supreme Court, if the courts rule this is unconstitutional then it's no longer a law. They won't be able to pass the same bill as a law because that too would be unconstitutional.
Judges have always had this power in the United States, its not a new thing.
We passed "meaningful" health care reform? Was there a replacement bill passed recently that was not publicized?
All right ... all right ... but apart from better sanitation and medicine and education and irrigation and public health and roads and a freshwater system and baths and public order ... what have the Romans ever done for us?
Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
Next they probably rule that being poor is unconstitutional because you cannot buy enough stuff and therefore damage the economy which seems to be the only important factor in the U.S.
Meanwhile I realized that the difference between Obama as president and McCain is probably not much more than the color of their skin. They are both spineless idiots that just follow the way that money leads them. I guess the only way to go for you guys is further down the same road that you apparently chose as the only truth: money, money, money. Will be interesting to see where that will lead you to. I presume civil war at some point when the gap between the rich and the poor has reach a level where the masses won't shut up anymore and even tanks and armed forces will be the lesser evil compared to poverty and the lack of a proper future.
They can't force you to have auto insurance. They can't force you to buy a car.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
Federal Government doesn't force you to have auto insurance if you have a car. The state governments say if you want to drive your car on the public roads then you have to have insurance. I know lots of people with a) no cars and b) vehicles never taken on public roads (think real rural areas on massive amount of private land) who don't have auto insurance.
This law basically says you have to have health insurance. Period. Big difference.
If he had simply put a tax increase in the bill to pay for it, it would be totally constitutional. That was not possible from a political PoV, so they came up with the individual mandate.
IMHO, the fatal flaw with the bill is that it doesn't (as a first step) try the low-cost solutions to fixing our system:
1. Abolish the anti-trust exemptions for health insurers. Yes. You heard me. I bet you didn't even know that so-called "progressives" are so ready, willing and able to ignore one of the key ideas of the original Progressive Era, circa 1900.
2. Price transparency. In most states you can't even check to see if you're being ripped off because price lists are secret!
3. Eliminate provider networks. All insurers must pay the same rates from all providers, and must accept claims from any licensed practitioner.
4. Uniform, standard billing codes.
2, 3 and 4 would combine to reveal the regime in ways heretofore unseen, a veritable Wikileak of our current healthcare insanity. It would also help to eliminate over-billing of our current government programs.
None of these very low cost alternatives got on the table. Instead, not only were the inneficient inscos not punished, they were actually rewarded with the individual mandate! It's just another example of how powerful interests have bought government.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
There's a lot of FUD out there about health insurance. So here's the facts:
Country A: Health insurance is optional. So only the sick get health insurance. Their premiums are high, because they use their health insurance a lot. The young and uninsured meanwhile, a few of them need to go to the hospital too (broken arms, etc.: anyone can have a health emergency, even the very healthy). However, since the young and uninsured are usually poor, they can't afford the bills. They avoid them. Or declare bankruptcy. The hospital passes the unpaid bills onto the state and feds, and your tax dollars pay to keep the hospital from going bankrupt. Since no self-respecting society can turn away the sick, this already is universal healthcare, just paid for in the stupidest most expensive way possible. As well as destroying young people's credit and encouraging them to freeload and act irresponsibly.
Country B: Health insurance is mandatory. So everyone pays premiums. The premiums are low, because only a small percentage of the insured population actually use the insurance. The young need insurance because they can get sick too, and no, it is not wrong to be using some of the money of the young to treat the older and sick. This is called morality in most societies: you care for the elderly and sick in your society. Only in an immoral society are you encouraged to not care for your elders and your weak.
So why is the USA stuck in Country A status? Because insurance companies are making money hand over fist in the broken system, and don't want to lose their profits. They pay for FUD propaganda about government death panels, massive expense increases, etc., the naive and foolish believe the FUD, and the naive and foolish wind up supporting a system that hurts their health.
And then there is the criticism of quality of healthcare between country A and country B. And it is true: crisis care in country A is superior to crisis care in country B. Why? Because crisis care, like heart attacks, is expensive, therefore generating revenues. See, country A is all about making money, not taking care of your health. Meanwhile, country B actually delivers a genuine higher quality healthcare, at a lower cost, because the emphasis is on preventative care: making sure you get screened, diagnosed, and put on a diet/ pills so you don't even get that heart attack in the first place... but that approach doesn't make as much money, see? It has to be about making money, not taking care of you?
Look: car insurance is mandatory in the USA. If you understand the logic behind that, you understand why health insurance should be mandatory, and not some evil socialist plot to destroy America, blah blah blah, FUD and propaganda paid for by health corporations.
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
You're close to flamebait but I'll try to dig you out with a reply.
"Meaningful" means that of all reform passed, there is a subset of that reform which qualifies as health care reform. However, up to now it's been patchwork issues. "Meaningful" reform has been on some five Presidents' agendas and gotten torpedoed by Politics As Usual. The most famous proponent to get crunched was Hillary Clinton. This was just when the Repub's started hitting grand slams with the voters and vowed to crush anything she proposed.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
"Meaningful" means, representing a substantial change for the affected people.
This bill is by that definition, about as far from meaningful as it gets.
If anything we are worse off than before. No more people are covered, some people have less coverage, and for all it is more expensive.
The War on Drugs is a result of Wickard v Fillburn and more recently Gonzales v Raich. Both decisions were horrible. They allow the government to regulate almost any conduct which affects any interstate market -- including conduct that is purely local. But government regulation (setting rules for a market) is not the same as a mandate which forces people to engage in commerce. The health care bill is distinguished because it requires people to buy something.
The government cant force you to have auto insurance any more than it can force you to have a car. The only insurance you are required to have on a car is liability insurance in the event that you do decide to buy one. Just like if you decide to open a medical practice you are required to buy liability insurance.
First: That's a state law. The healthcare bill is a federal law. For auto insurance to fall afoul of the judiciary, it would have to be shown to violate the constitution of the *state* where the law mandates that purchase.
Second: In *some states* you are obligated to by auto insurance as a condition of registering a car and being allowed to operate it. If you don't want to buy auto insurance, there's a very simple way to opt out: move to a city, take public transit everywhere, and don't own a car.
Do you think for a second that auto insurance could be mandatory for everybody to purchase, whether or not they owned a car or were old enough / competent enough to be licensed to operate one?
It is worth noting that while this judge says that the individual mandate is unconstitutional, two other Federal judges (one in Michigan, and one from a different case in Virginia) have said that it is just fine. This will doubtless go all the way up to the Supreme Court.
If intelligent life is too complex to evolve on its own, who designed God?
There is no provision in the Constitution that affords the central government the power to force citizens to purchase anything. They have authority to "Regulate" commerce but NOT FORCE people to participate in that commerce!
The primary principle behind the US is liberty. Liberty to chose to do business with a cutthroat banker, doctor, or lying politician are all rights. The problem with today's generation is that they are willing to give up their liberty for temporary security! The phrase "Give me Liberty or give me Death" is an anathema to most people today. 9/11 proved that the majority of Americans are more willing to die than defend their liberty!
From a Libertarian's perspective, "meaningful" means all of those in addition to axing the health insurance industry. That system is the biggest part of the cancer that is killing us. Once healthcare providers have no choice but to make services affordable or run out of customers, they will find a way. As long as health insurance exists, they will have no need to make services affordable.
I see the glass as full with a FoS of 2.
Quoting Judge Hudson, "At its core, this dispute is not simply about regulating the business of insurance—or crafting a scheme of universal health insurance coverage—it's about an individual's right to choose to participate."
The problem with his perspective, is that the eventual goal of universal healthcare is aimed at prevention. Not matter how incomplete the current health care bill is, the eventual goal is to decrease high cost of health care associated with late complications of TREATABLE diseases.
If you are sick right now in this country and you walk into an emergency room, they are obligated to treat you. You can't not be turned down for care if you can't not pay, so long as the care is necessary. So if you can't pay and you have no insurance, somebody's gotta suck up the cost. Doctors, nurses and pharmacists arn't going to work full time jobs for free. Guess who has to pay? The taxpayers, through government giving hospitals checks so they don't go bankrupt.
Now take Billy Bob, he is a 40 y/o truck driver, smokes 1 pack a day. He has no health insurance, so he doesn't see a doctor. No one tells him to quit smoking. He has hypertension, but he doesn't get treated because he feels fine and doesn't see a doctor. At Age 50 he develops diabetes, he feels crappy from time to time but he doesn't see a doctor(no insurance) At Age 58 he has an heart attack, get sent to the ER. They find he can't be cathed, and has to go through a bypass procedure. Except he is also is in chronic renal failure from chronic diabetes and hypertension. To save his life they do a bypass and his kidney is shot for good. He stays in the ICU for 2 weeks sick as a dog after his surgery, because
he has COPD and his lungs won't work. Then he gets to go home but is living on dialysis. At age 60 he has a big head bleed from all the anticoagulants he takes for his heart. He goes back to the hospital and slow waste away after a Tracheostomy and PEG(Percutaneous endoscopic gastrotomy or feeding tube.) He dies six weeks later in a nursing home from pneumonia.
Was his care good? Absolutely, top notch care, they did everything right. Except for the last 2 years his life sucked, and he died a miserable death. What's his cost of care? It's probably more than Billy Bob ever made in his entire life. And taxpayers are paying for it.
So what's the alternative? Billy Bob has insurance, he sees a doctor. He can't quit smoking but at least he start taking his blood pressure pills and his diabetes pills. His first heart attack comes at age 68 but he is not as sick so his bypass goes much smoother. He get scared and finally quit smoking. Great, that's a lot more years on his life, that he can enjoy. A lot more years where he is contributing to society by driving a truck. And as a Tax payer...I like the fact that ten years of blood pressure pill and insulin still cost a hell of a lot less than Emergency Bypass+ICU+Diaysis+Trach PEG and nursing home. I think if Billy Bob had to pick, he'd pick this route as well.
That is why everyone should have insurance. Now the other alternative is stop paying for Emergency Care. Grandma has an appendicitis? No insurance...let her die. You wife get shot in a drive by? No insurance...bleed to death. Your kid came out with some rare genetic disease that's gonna cost tens of thousands to fix? No insurance...good luck. You can crawl to the doorsteps of the ER, and they'll shut the door on you if you can't pay.
But are we ready for this kind of society? I don't think we are...yet.
So since I am a taxpayer, and I have to pay for people who can't pay...I rather pay less. So what is wrong with universal health care? Every dumb idiot out there who isn't covered and seeing a doctor, is making me pay more out of my pocket. Because when they are sick enough, they all come to the hospital.
I disagree with Judge Hudson, it's not about an individual's right to choose to participate. It's about if I have to pay taxes, I like to pay less.
The house essentially creates the law, and must pass it. It then goes to the senate which can revise it. In practice these tend to go on at the same time. Once it passes the house and the senate, the president can pass or veto it (veto only makes it require a larger margin).
Laws that authorize the spending of money *must* originate in the House (per the Constitution). All other types of laws can originate in either the House or the Senate.
In the US (and other common law countries) laws can be ruled unconstitutional by the judiciary. Should a law be challenged and get high enough, it can essentially be repealed by the supreme court.
Note that nowhere in the Constitution is this authority explicitly granted to the judiciary. It's not explicitly granted to *anyone*. But early in the country's history, the Supreme Court arbitrarily decided that it was the the job of the judiciary to judge the constitutionality of laws, and since it's been 200 or so years without anyone amending the Constitution to say otherwise it's pretty much generally accepted that the courts *do* have this power.
Don't tell me to get a life. I had one once. It sucked.
What really needed to be done is:
1. Single payer system for basic healthcare. You can't have surgeons and insurance company execs who drive Ferraris and reduced healthcare cost at the same time. No pain - no gain, something's gotta give. In the system where the normal pricing rules don't work (because prices aren't even advertised, and you won't bargain anyway when it's your health or life that's on the line), someone has to have the authority to fight the more extravagant examples of creative pricing (i.e. pharmaceuticals that cost 1/10th the price once you cross either of the borders)
2. All premium services (i.e. shit you wouldn't die from if denied care) require separate insurance, with stiff premiums.
3. A separate, progressive, mandatory federal income tax for healthcare (and yes, I know it would hit me disproportionally, since I make quite a bit).
4. To reduce the tax burden, reduce Pentagon budget by 4/5ths or more and get out of fucking Afghanistan. Winning there is _not possible_. If we're so into spending money we don't have, let's at least spend it on things that matter.
5. Put the Congress and the Senate on the same insurance plans as what their constituents have. Not gold-plated, diamond encrusted Cadillac plans they pay $0 for right now. Make them feel the pain of the common man.
Republicans like insurance, yes? And they like things to be as inexpensive as possible, yes?
Then Republicans ought to love nationalized health care, as it reduces costs with the power of economic force. Statistics (you know, what people are, from an insurance company's perspective) become more predictable and thus cheaper as the pool of risk grows. Competition is counter-productive in this sphere, because it carves up the pool of risk, and increases the administrative burden. Insurance is not and cannot be a competitive industry. The market just does not satisfy the competitive market axioms.
Somehow, this is lost on many Americans.
After all, I am strangely colored.
When they quite literally have you by your life, they can charge whatever they want. It's the definition of unbalanced contracts and negotiating from a position of weakness.
The ______ Agenda
From a Liberals perspective, meaningful health care means you provide free health care to all, the resulting quality of which is so poor only the richest people can have decent health care because anyone who really wants good care pays out of pocket.
Instead of a system where even poor people can buy catastrophic plans to have access to really good health care when needed, the middle class have excellent health care through reasonably priced policies, and you have a safety net of basic coverage for people that cannot afford anything.
The last option of course makes the most sense. If you make something totally free to all the quality will suck as people abuse the system. We are not anywhere near the ideal system because of runaway costs in the system, but the real question is the ideal we should strive for, and a system that is free for all and good for none is not my idea of the best end-goal.
Forcing people to buy health care is not a great idea if you take away choice as to what they can buy and make sure that all plans you can purchase are loaded with options many may not want.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
100% agree.
..the problem is that there is no incentive for a person to shop around when they face the same co-pay regardless of how much the service costs.
..so health care providers can charge just about anything...
The problem is not the insurance companies taking a large cut of the pie, for their profit margins are actually quite reasonable..
When insurance companies tried to do something about it (via HMO's, etc..) the legislators had a field day and re-classified HMO's as something other than insurance (HMO's can't get an Insurance License.. instead they have to get a Certificate of Authority)
We must remove the disconnect between those requesting service and those paying for it.
"His name was James Damore."
increasing the number of Democrat voters by increasing the size of the insured pool
That statement makes no sense, whatsoever. Why would people suddenly want to vote democratic if they just purchased insurance? More likely they would be angry at the democrats for forcing them into a broken system...
all so Obama can declare to his supporters that he passed "the most meaningful healthcare reform in the country's history,"
That is crap. Amongst Obama voters nothing that he has done so far has been as monumentally disappointing as the health insurance bailout act. Have you actually looked at the polls? In most polls that ask people how they view the bill, half of the people who oppose it, oppose it for not going far enough - where do you think those people came from (politically)? The people who are the most disgusted with the current system are the lower income brackets of traditionally liberal voters, who recognize that this bill doesn't do shit to help them.
just in time for the 2012 reelection campaign
He would be an idiot to try to appeal to his voting base with the health insurance bailout act. He will call it a "bipartisan compromise" and nothing more congratulatory than that. He knows that the people who supported him most enthusiastically in 2008 are mad as hell about this bill, and he won't piss on them if he wants to be re-elected.
Why was big pharma left out of the dance?
Because the bill didn't solve anything else at all, so why bother going after something else to not correct?
How about tort reform?
That is a great boogey man, and the health insurance companies are happy to see you brought it up. It means that there are still plenty of people who think that the insurance companies are doing an adequate (enough) job that they don't have to worry about seeing anything done to their own business model.
If we're looking to cut costs, the drug makers and fucking lawyers would sure be at the top of my list.
The insurance companies (and their ad campaigns) thank you for your cooperation. They look forward to your higher premiums in the very near future - and ever increasing for the rest of your life.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
You know, this wouldn't be a problem if we just exterminated all the liberals. Conservatives don't expect other people to pay for their health care. They pay for their own.
Liberals - good for solving problems that wouldn't be problems if we didn't have liberals.
Are you proposing that emergency care services be denied for anyone who doesn't have proof of current insurance or cash on hand when they arrive?
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
Meanwhile people die because some bastards have been paid off to stop a health care plan that is far less ambitious than the Republicans were pushing under Nixon. You can bet he's not doing it because he's a "flaming crazy" but the only way to show that is to follow the money.
Well, a lot of the problem comes from the bastardization of the concept of INSURANCE when it comes to health care. Insurance should be there ONLY for catastrophic health events(ie heart attack, accident). Routine health expenditures, should be saved and budgeted for like any other necessity of life (food, shelter, beer...).
If this were the case, then insurance wouldn't be so damned expensive. Also, if we went back more the "in my day" days...you'd have the independent Dr. out there again hanging his shingle out, and could charge reasonable rates, often based on what the person could pay. My uncle was an MD, I saw how this worked in practice. Medical costs weren't outrageous like they are now...IMHO, this is largely due to bean counters and other non-health leeches on the system ratcheting things up to the mess we have today.
Why not go to insurance for more emergency usage, and expand the program for HSA's (Health Savings Accounts) for everyone, to save for their own routine medical/drug needs PRE-Tax, and unlike the FSA's, let everyone have a HSA that is not use it or lose it.
Why should routine health care not be a personal responsibility like anything else in life?
This also might break the strange connection between health insurance and work...which often today, ties one to a job for people that are worried about changing jobs and jeopardizing benefits.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
every single fucking dime they had before they died. that's how much.
Seems like an amendment could address the 'constitutionality' issues. Of course, those are hard to pass. Then again, there's a reason for that.
The problem is with trying to fit market principles into everything. Not every square fits into a round hole.
In the case of health care, most people are trying to avoid a case where only some people can afford good health care. And that is what would happen if health care was purely left to the market. Maybe they're willing to let some customers die, as long as enough pay to make a profit. There's no incentive in a free market to provide a service to every single person regardless of ability to pay. And yet we as a society have for the most part decided that health care should be a right granted to everyone.
Ultimately, my problem with the entire argument is that everyone I know who doesn't have health insurance could easily afford it but for an unwillingness to correct blatant prioritization problems. The latest gadget is far more important than saving for future rainy days.
You must not know a lot of poor people then.
I actually know a lot of people without insurance who in no way could afford even the most basic catastrophic insurance. They're not blowing their money on the latest gadgets- it goes towards rent, food, and bills. There's none left over for rainy days.
Additionally, a lot of them probably could benefit quite a lot from better healthcare coverage, since they often are dealing with depression, anxiety, etc. which make it difficult to get an education or hold down a decent job that might actually help get them out of poverty.
The libertarian solution to the failures of capitalism is to apply more capitalism til the failures are fixed.
Were you there defending your liberty at the airports during thanksgiving?
When they quite literally have you by your life, they can charge whatever they want.
If all your potential customers die because you charged more than they could afford, how much money have you made?
Not everyone's gonna die before reproducing, even with overly expensive health care. That, and you could teach "abstinence only" sex ed to keep the number of births up.
I am not a crackpot.
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness"
You have some serious cognitive dissonance. How exactly does health care not become a right if people have a right to life? Perhaps you should ponder the concepts behind the quotes. While you are there, please note that the statement explicity holds that women are inferior (minorities implicitly), that it is an assertion, requires the existence of a Creator (no evidence, appeal to authority). In other words, it leaves a lot to be desired.
"If, however, you believe that a RIGHT can be secured by the TAKING from another, then I suggest that you lock your kidneys up, because someone's right to LIFE might require them to TAKE your kidney, regardless of how you feel about it. If you can demand of me to give to another to secure a "right", then society has the same ability to do the same thing to you in ways that is most unpleasant."
Strawman much? Be very careful of any open flames. And you had better be a pacifist. Because if you are not, then you support precisely what you are strawmaning against.
"It cost money to produce, people to work for it, technology and skills to enhance it."
One of the failings of libertarianism is the idea that somehow money is more important that liberty and life.
I love your idea - we should just follow the previous examples! We already have a nationwide network of hospitals for military - VA! All we have to do is to widen and let any citizen access them. Just like we did with highways and the Internet. A great suggestion!
Insurance should be there ONLY for catastrophic health events(ie heart attack, accident). Routine health expenditures, should be saved and budgeted for like any other necessity of life (food, shelter, beer...).
Sounds good, but that has an interesting side-effect. It doesn't take much in "routine health expenditures" - especially once they've been suitably padded out by a broken healthcare system - before you're better off dead than alive from a microeconomic perspective. Your proposal will effectively enforce this. Once someone's routine healthcare costs plus other costs of living exceed their income (which is probably going to be severely reduced by medical problems), they'll run out of cash for treatment and die.
Of course, the best part is the unpredictability. You can never be sure that the next day, you'll discover you have a health problem that means you're now worthless, or if a family member or a loved one will suffer the same fate.
Remember, the entire point of insurance is that it spreads risk - the cost of any one person becoming seriously ill is spread across the many people. That spreading of risk is just as necessary for long-term conditions.