Slashdot Mirror
Healthcare Law Appealed To Supreme Court
26 states and a small business group have filed separate appeals to the U.S. Supreme Court, asking it to strike down Obama's 2010 healthcare law. In August, an appeals court in Atlanta ruled that the individual insurance requirement was unconstitutional, making it almost certain that the bill would go to the Supreme Court. From the article: "The Obama administration earlier this week said it decided against asking the full U.S. Appeals Court for the 11th Circuit to review the August ruling by a three-judge panel of the court that found the insurance requirement unconstitutional. That decision cleared the way for the administration to go to the Supreme Court. The administration has said it believes the law will be upheld in court while opponents say it represents an unconstitutional encroachment of federal power."
What other products will they eventually mandate that we buy from corporations, purely by virtue of existing?
Strike down ObamaCare, and you've got years of unraveling to do (especially in IT, which has been starting work in anticipation of several key dates coming up), as well as a apoplectic progressive left. Uphold ObamaCare, and you've got a drum upon which every libertarian and conservative will beat any time there's the slightest increase in health insurance costs, and who knows what kind of crazy social conservative will be the one to carry the mantle of the White House (even though most people just want fiscal conservatives).
The sad part, though, is that none of this fight is about health care - it's about insurance. We could mandate universal auto insurance (even for non drivers, since they are either passengers or pedestrians who interact with cars), or we could mandate universal fire insurance (even for non homeowners, since they might start a fire that spreads, or be affected by smoke inhalation from someone else's house), or we could mandate universal food insurance (since hey, everyone eats food). None of that changes the facts about risk and scarcity in our world.
It's clearly established that the US government can force you to pay a tax for services you never use. The health care law is less restrictive than that. It still forces you to pay, but you can choose the entity you pay. If the government can force you to buy something from a single source, then it certainly should be able to force you to buy something from one of many sources.
However, I have no reason to believe that the Supreme Court will come to the obvious and logical conclusion here. That's not their job. Their job is to provide legal cover for the corporate agenda.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Single-payer national health insurance, like Medicare, would have had no constitutional problems. If the "public option" had been retained in the bill, it might have ended up as the only option.
That's not a bad thing; Medicare's overhead is about 3%, while private insurers run a lot higher.
Citizens of USA should pay exclusively for the maintenance of the roads they use, the electricity of the lampposts that light their garages' entrances, and the police man-power required to patrol their neighborhoods. Anything else means the communists won.
Disclaimer: perhaps I'm trolling, perhaps I'm not.
Perhaps I'm trolling, perhaps I'm not.
Medicare's overhead is 3% because they don't pay anyone (relatively speaking anyway) to investigate and then deny false claims.
Fewer than 5% of Meidcare claims are audited.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/06/12/AR2008061203915.html
Yea, because its not like there was a shit ton of lobbying done by the insurance industry to kill the idea of a single payer system.
"In America, first you get the sugar, then you get the power, then you get the women..." -H. Simpson
I feel as though if I have a savings account for accidents, why should I have to buy car insurance? Usually I'm told something to the effect of "well they have to make it law or there would be too many people driving around causing accidents and not paying for it". OK, so how is that ok but health insurance is off-limits? Seems like people without health insurance going to emergency rooms are also not paying and racking up bills. Nobody has been able to give me a straight answer. I suspect much of it is irrational hatred of Obama. But I would love to hear a rational argument, either for or against, why I need health and/or car insurance. The government has been mandating one for ages and the other more recently, and so I'm trying to reconcile it in my head (though its likely futile I'm sure, society doesn't have to always do things that are rational and consistent).
The only way this will ever get better in the U.S. is when we have a single payer system, that covers everyone. There is simply no excuse for us to not have it. This is what has been most disappointing about Obama. He's passing center-right and right wing policies (mandates were originally the Republican idea, folks, Clinton rejected it in the 90's), and The Left is taking the blame for it. If we had a real liberal in there, he would have fought for "Medicare For All", and not a 1990's Republican plan.
had the argument been framed as "medicare for all" I think it would have gone much better and would have cut back on the people with "keep the government out of my medicare" signs.
Except the Republicans (and blue dog dems) fought to get this option removed.
Watch this Heartland Institute video
Oh look, it's the new Godwin's Law - As an online discussion of libertarianism grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Somalia approaches 1.
Will be waiting for your next response, maybe something regarding privatized roads or police departments.
I looked it up and found that John Adams signed a law mandating sailors to purchase health insurance. Here is a link to the law: 5th congress passed law and an article talking about it: daily KOS article So if precedent means anything it doesn't look like the law will be struck down. Though stranger things have happened before.
.
Through the 1990's, various Republicans submitted health care bills specifying the individual mandate.
The Republicans are, as usual, being quite hypocritical in their objections to the individual mandate in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010. Perhaps it is time for the Republicans to back away from their objection to everything and roadblock generation, and get down to the business of governing.
Mandatory health insurance doesn't just benefit those who are ill, it benefits the rest of society who have any interaction with that person, or their dependants. The more people who are fit enough to work and be productive the better it is for society, which means more people paying taxes. It's like people complaining about funding schools - they don't realise what it would be like if huge swathes of society was deprived of adequate education - society would grind to a halt. But meh - logic doesn't matter to those folks.
Except the Constitution explicitly gives congress the power to collect taxes. It is not at all clear that it has the power to "mandate that individuals enter into contracts with private insurance companies for the purchase of an expensive product from the time they are born until the time they die".
All laws where similar things are done (such as requiring car insurance, requiring contractors to be licensed and bonded,etc), differ in significant ways. Some are enforced by the state, not the federal government, who have different powers granted to them. Some only apply when participating in an arguably optional activity not to everyone alive. Some are only required to engage in business, and thus more clearly fall under the interstate commerce act. This is an open legal question, one that was bound to challenged when the law was passed. The faster it gets resolved in the Supreme Court the better.
However, I have no reason to believe that the Supreme Court will come to the obvious and logical conclusion here. That's not their job.
No it isn't their job. Their job is to interpret the law and constitution as it is written, not according their own personal opinion/logic nor yours.
Quoting another poster: Libertarians are not anarchists, just like American liberals are not communists. Wanting less government does not mean wanting no government.
You've already been answered by someone in this thread. Somolia has no government, and no support of individual rights. That is very clearly not what libertarians advocate or desire, so it does not serve as a invalidation of libertarianism.
The next question is... will people in this thread stop using that invalid Somolia comparison? I bet I know the answer to that....
Libertarianism requires a framework of laws to protect the rights of all parties, and provide for legal recourse should the rights of one party be infringed by another.
Even at its worst, Somalia operated under a combination of religious law (Sharia), feudalism and anarchy.
Please, tell me: which one of the many different governments in Somalia has implemented a Libertarian society?
Rhode Island does not require auto insurance. Others let you self insure.
By the way, what is a "Federal Road"? - and are they not goverened by state laws - not national ones?
This is why I have no hope for anything anymore. Even little things like this are parsed into unreality and woven into the tapestry of myth, lies and nonsense that represents "truth" for most people. I can;t even talk politics to anyone anymore because it's constant triage figuring out which lies they believe to fix first, and you can't fix them anyway, because they "know what they know". This applies to ideologues from one end of the spectrum to the other.
Seriously, considering how big a boost single payer or similar would be to economic mobility and entrepreneurship Free Market(tm) loving Republicans should be clambering for it. Trading a shitty "freedom" like picking which insurance company rapes you for a better one like dramatically improved job mobility is a no-brainer, and pretty much the exact kind of thing we have government in the first place.
Any Free Market worshipper who wouldn't support something like single payer is almost certainly a hopeless ideologue ("who cares that the end is closer to my proclaimed goal, the means to get there are technically counter to my idea of how things should work so screw the whole thing!"), a lying douchebag shill, or a complete dumbass. Maybe all three.
Want to help the "job creators" hire people? Enact a "socialist" health care law modeled on any of a couple dozen successful systems tomorrow and watch as 50,000 new businesses show up seemingly out of no-where, wages rise, health care costs drop, and offshoring slows.
Are health and justice.
Without a method of law and justice, there's anarchy. And a civilization can't exist in an anarchy (well, not a big one anyway, and certainly not a world player).
Hand in hand with that is health. When you're sick, you're returned to work, or the ability to go and get the next job.
Without both of those, life would be hard. That's what prompted the NHS in the UK years ago, and much as though it's a popular whipping boy sometimes, and a big money sink, we do have a well functioning medical body that will fix most things.
If you want it faster, by all means, take up private insurance as well (hell, when things go wrong at the private hospitals, they pack the patients back to the NHS where they know it'll be fixed).
If you really don't think the state should be involved in the general wellbeing of the people, then how do you feel about a completely privately owned police force and court system. You think you get it rough now with the MPAA and RIAA lobbying to get through a heavily one sided deal? It would be orders of magnitude worse under a completely private, for profit, arrangement.
Personally, I rate my health as highly as I rate a chance at getting a bit of justice (the legal system doesn't always give you the answer you want, same as a hospital won't always give you good news, but at least everyone should have a shot at getting some, without having to reach for a credit card).
That's part of what I call freedom. If the world falls apart around you, at least you have your health 'eh? What, you can't afford the medication, and you have to put yourself in someone's debt to be able to do so? Hmmmm...
Healthcare should be a function of government, with commerce adding the nice bits on top.. Faster, newer, hopefully better, but definitely more expensive. The real grunt work of keeping the masses healthy should be simple and cheap.. Not necessarily profitable.
Taxes are admitted to be required to maintain the basic level of services necessary to secure the rights of the people.
In that case I think it's the people who say "taxes are theft" who don't understand libertarianism.
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
Technically, anything forced from you under threat is theft or, more correctly, robbery. Taxing (at least income taxes) is forcing you to give the government money under threat of being put in jail. Businesses are forced to collect sales tax under threat of being fined and put out of business.
However, if you consider your relationship with the government to be consensual, and individual taxes as being consented to, then there is no theft. But in our current system the individual taxes really don't have much to do with the consent of the people.
The end goal of libertarianism is liberty -- the free and consual association of people. At a minimum you need enough government to guarantee that. But government can very quickly be the agent that restricts that freedom and the consensual nature of the association.
Hospitals here are already overcrowded with people dying in emergency room waiting areas, and we're already subsidizing them. Just at a much higher cost than we would for a single-payer system.
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
Not the original poster, but here are a couple pluses for (new) small businesses.
1. If your health insurance is tied to your current employer, can you afford to quit and start your own business? New businesses tend to be cash poor, depending on the owner's sweat equity to survive until they can become established. Do you go without insurance until then?
2. In a normal job market, if you are a small business trying to hire talented technical people, you have to compete with companies in a much larger insurance pool. There is no way you can match the benefit costs of a business 10x or 100x your size. So you have to pay more to attract the same level of candidate. Single payer instantly levels the playing field on the most expensive benefit.
Another thing that would help is fixing intellectual property laws, but that's out of scope for this discussion.
Another day, another update to a Google android app.
First of all, I have to correct myself. According to Wolfram Alpha, the U.S. poverty rate in 2010 was 12%, with "poverty" defined as annual income at or below $11,139 for a single person. I think we can agree, no matter where you are in the U.S., it is tough to get by on $11K per year.
So I took a look at the poverty level in 1980, and it was $4,190, again for a single person. Adjusting for inflation to 2010 dollars, Wolfram Alpha gives me $11,237. So I disagree with respect to adjusting the definition of poverty: the definition does get adjusted upward, but in fact is increasing a tiny bit slower than inflation, with the net effect that it's basically stable when viewed in inflation-adjusted dollars.
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.