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Supreme Court: Affordable Care Act Is Constitutional
This morning the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that the Affordable Care Act is constitutional. The health insurance mandate, also known as "Obamacare" was found to be "permissible under Congress's taxing authority." The full ruling (PDF) is now available, and the court's opinion begins on page 7. Amy Howe from SCOTUSblog summarized the ruling thus:
"The Affordable Care Act, including its individual mandate that virtually all Americans buy health insurance, is constitutional. There were not five votes to uphold it on the ground that Congress could use its power to regulate commerce between the states to require everyone to buy health insurance. However, five Justices agreed that the penalty that someone must pay if he refuses to buy insurance is a kind of tax that Congress can impose using its taxing power. That is all that matters. Because the mandate survives, the Court did not need to decide what other parts of the statute were constitutional, except for a provision that required states to comply with new eligibility requirements for Medicaid or risk losing their funding. On that question, the Court held that the provision is constitutional as long as states would only lose new funds if they didn't comply with the new requirements, rather than all of their funding."
Further coverage is available from CNN, the NY Times, and Fox.
If you don't do what the government wants, you will find a new "tax" will appear to make you do it.
What ever happened to the public option? You know, cutting the profit motive out of funding health care, so that people do not have to fight with their insurance companies or with hospitals just to get the treatment they need?
Palm trees and 8
Medical insurance is not only incredibly frustrating to deal with, but a huge unnecessary expense in the system.
Maybe you could, I don't know, skip the article?
One, Justice Roberts took something that was not written as a tax, only defended as one, and changed the legislation.
Two, Justice Roberts confirmed that every time Pelosi, Reid, and Obama claim something isn't a tax, they are liars. Which most of us already knew.
Professional Politicians are not the solution, they ARE the problem.
Quite surprising to see Roberts cross the aisle on this decision. For all of its flaws (and there are many), the Affordable Care Act is a step in the right direction. Health care is one of the major issues of our time, and it's not realistic to suppose that a single piece of legislation can resolve it.
tax:
noun
1. a sum of money demanded by a government for its support or for specific facilities or services, levied upon incomes, property, sales, etc.
2. a burdensome charge, obligation, duty, or demand.
As the mandate is to give money to private insurers, and not the government itself, it does not fall under the Constitutional definition of a legal tax. I'm a bit shocked to see the SCOTUS uphold the law under an obvious and blatantly false definition of taxation, although after Citizen's United, nothing those berobed assholes do is really all that surprising.
So, the real question is: Our government is imposing an illegal tax on the people in direct violation of the Constitution; what do we do now?
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
I'm already taxed for not having a mortgage, not producing "clean" coal, not having children, and numerous other things that we as a culture have decided should be incentivized. The former two items in your list would be a clear violation of the first amendment, which this case did not rest on, whereas the third would be constitutional(but also kind of silly).
You were already doing that before, partly through your taxes, partly through effectively paying higher amounts to hospitals, in order to compensate hospitals for the all the ER visits they get from people without insurance (and thus likely never pay). You potentially could have ended up in the situation you were worried about if the Supreme Court struck down the individual mandate, but kept the rest of the law.
Yet another reason to stop voting for any of these candidates in this 2-party system. Yea, if we vote Romney in, I'm sure he'll overturn this debacle. But at the same time he'll figure out other ways to funnel our tax dollars in to industries that him and his party supports. Burn it all down.
*plays the Apogee theme song music*
Nonsense.
There are all sorts of contingent taxes.
Chief Justice Roberts: “It Is Not Our Job to Protect the People From the Consequences of Their Political Choices”
There you go... bring on the consequences!
So who's job is it to look out for the best interests of the country? Is that one of those mystery jobs that Americans just don't want to do?
Every normal man must be tempted, at times, to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats. -HLM
your argument is the same kind of argument as "if gays can marry, soon you can marry dead people and animals!"
or "if marijuana is legal, soon meth and coke will be too!"
it's bullshit fearmongering. your point of view depends upon the fact that people don't think and can't tell the difference between different subject matter and weigh them separately
of course they can. well, maybe you can't
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
No, they'll go up faster because the insurance companies can say "We have to pay for Obamacare," when in fact they are benefiting from it as you mentioned. This is the way most corporations, especially insurance corporations, work.
Probably so--the individual mandate was a Republican idea to begin with.
I admire the Democrats for helping to tackle health care reform. There are some really good things in there--preventing insurance companies from rescinding coverage, allowing parents to insure kids up to 26, etc. But as a Democrat, I have mixed feelings about today's decision. I do not like the individual mandate, as like you, I feel that Congress shouldn't have the power to make you buy something from a private company.
I was actually hoping that the law would stand as-is, except for the individual mandate, which I was hoping would be overturned. At that point, insurance companies would be screwed--they'd still be forced to cover those that they traditionally worked so hard to drop off the rolls, but without money coming in from those who are statistically healthier and less likely to pay for insurance. At that point, one of two things would happen: either 1) the insurance companies would lower prices on their policies to reasonable levels to be more conducive for healthy people to buy, or 2) the insurance industry would basically petition government to expand Medicare to cover those that they don't want to. Either way, it would be win/win.
Ultimately, the only answer is a single-payer system. As long as you have private companies in the insurance business, there is a perverse incentive to screw their customers over. People whine and complain about government's incompetence, and I'd never say there's no waste or that government is perfect. However, I trust government a hell of a lot more than I trust the insurance industry, which has proven time and again that they're scum.
For political reasons, it couldn't be called a tax. The Supreme Court wasn't impressed by the semantics.
I don't practice what I preach because I'm not the kind of person that I'm preaching to.
1. Canada and the UK have socialised medicine handled by the government. You don't have to buy insurance, you just pay taxes, fill out some paperwork, and voila, medicare (however, in Canada, different provinces have different schemes for drug insurance) I don't understand this idea of forcing Americans to BUY insurance. Isn't it usual that if the government forces people to BUY something for whatever reason (eg: you have to goto drivers school to get a drivers license), then the thing they are buying will suddenly sky rocket in price?
2. What are HMOs?
3. Why are Americans so convinced that amoral profit seeking corporations have their best interests at heart, and not an elected government whose power is given to them by the people?
I'm god, but it's a bit of a drag really...
If you don't think government is driven by profit, you're dreaming.
When buying and selling are controlled by legislation, the first things to be bought and sold are legislators. P. J. O'Rourke
"There are laws that enslave men, and laws that set them free. " - Sean Connery as King Arthur
You've been "picking up the" tab all along, dumbass. Forcing, (or allowing, depending on your point of view) the uninsured to go the an E.R. for basic care - and not providing them with ANY preventative care, is expensive. Someone pays that bill. Who could that be, I wonder.
Wow, are you likely to get an earful over this. Here's my perspective (not a neutral one):
The "individual mandate" part of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) requires you to carry health care insurance. However, supporters claim that because the risk associated to insurers is now spread out over a much larger segment of the population (those who would normally decline health insurance are obviously less likely to need it), the cost to individuals in terms of premiums is likely to decline. In other words, they're betting that the cost of your insurance is likely to decline. Personally, I think that's likely... for insurers, anyway. Whether insurers pass these cost savings to individuals is a craps shoot. When Massachusetts (under, ahem, Governor Romney) passed a law with an individual mandate, premiums fell something like 40% at the same time that it was rising nationally.
Another big part of the bill is the "pre-existing condition" clause: basically, an insurer cannot deny you coverage because you already have a medical condition that they don't want to cover. There was some worry among ACA boosters that the court might strike down the "individual mandate" part without the "pre-existing condition" part, which would have been catastrophic to the risk pools: seven states have tried passing pre-existing condition laws without the individual mandate, and it went very badly for all of them. So if it turns out that you come down with some kind of chronic or severe condition, it can no longer be used as a reason for an insurer to deny you insurance.
I assume to know who will get 'taxed' on this? There are swaths of exemptions, eg if you already have your own insurance you won't to pay the monthly $286 per family tax, military is exempt, VA exempt, religious organizations who oppose are exempt, the poor are exempt etc. The people who the tax is targeted at are those who can pay but refuse because they'd rather be parasites on the rest of us who do pay, such as yourself I can only assume.
Other (most) western countries have programs very much like this.
I'm so confused with my American brethren. You, the people, were absolutely fine with the previous president firing up the war machine on false pretenses to bomb the shit out of countries he couldn't even pronounce all in the name of contractor profits (of which you, the tax payer gets to foot the bill), yet little Johnny gets to sit with a broken leg in the emergency room because y'all think his parents are losers.
Sometimes I think the only people in the world that really hate Americans, are other Americans.
I shake my head in sadness. Love thy neighbour, indeed.
...why did we need the law?
Right, paying taxes makes you a slave. Interesting concept, I wonder how you think governments are supposed to function? Perhaps you think soldiers should just point their guns at people and demand food and shelter, simply bypassing the taxes entirely.
Try again kid.
Palm trees and 8
[citation needed]
Given that those who currently cost many times more for health coverage by visiting the emergency room will now have such insurance, the average unexpected costs of health care will actually go down. Other than throwing some unsupported politicized catch phrase out there, why not throw out some supporting arguments or facts?
Given that an insured family shells out an estimated additional $1000 dollars for uninsured patients who visit the emergency room, what do you think willl happen when the majority of those will now be covered?
Remember the number of 'families' in the U.S., multiple that by $1000 each for every family with insurance, and you begin to understand the scope of the unplanned costs that the uninsured add to every responsible persons budget.
I'm floored that the Republicans, who originally championed this idea, were so quick to do an about face simply because it was pushed through by a Democrat. This is a good thing, and necessary to control costs. Anyone who runs a budget or does accounting would always prefer a controlled (known) costs to an unknown cost. it's common sense and makes planning easier, as well as smooths out any financial distress to the system.
Healthcare should NOT be a for-profit industry. It is complete and utter barbarity for a so-called "civilized" society. I've stated before and will continue to state that any government that does not provide for the care of its people has no use.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - Evelyn Beatrice Hall, re Voltaire
And now...well, there is really nothing the feds can't tell us to do anymore....
When they can force you to buy something from a private company, game over.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Tax code is where most political power resides. Companies buying political favors are usually looking for tax breaks. States use dueling tax incentives to lure people/companies/film production to their state. Individuals receive various tax breaks for being good little wind-up-robots and doing what they are told.
Anyone who believes we will ever have a flat tax doesn't understand they are asking government to neuter itself. It just isn't going to happen.
is they can't get cheap preventive care
now they can
so they get $100 worth of care and stay healthy and stay working, rather than $100,000 worth of care later when they are already sick, because they don't have the financial resources to attend to their healthcare
sanity prevails
thank you justice roberts, you have a human conscience
we'll talk about the citizens united thing later
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Vote for someone else? What someone else?
This is like saying "You can always pick up the turd by the clean end."
You'll be subsidized if you can't afford it. Otherwise, it's pretty much like car insurance, so was the game already over decades ago?
"Obamacare" has a provision that forces insurance companies to spend at least 85% of their premiums on providing health care and limiting overhead to 15%. So even if the companies raise their premiums they're still stuck with spending it instead of just increasing profits. So any increase in premiums is probably related to increases in the underlying cost of health care. That may go down some or at least stop increasing so fast since there will be less unpaid for care in the first place. Did you know that about 60% of personal bankruptcies in this country are due to medical bills? Hopefully that will drop too.
You don't have to buy health insurance either. You will simply pay 2.5% more in income tax up to an extra $2,085 per year. But nobody is forcing you to purchase health insurance.
No sigs in BETA. Beta SUCKS.
You'll be subsidized if you can't afford it. Otherwise, it's pretty much like car insurance, so was the game already over decades ago?
Biggest piece of social legislation since FDR and it survives, which means we start moving people back into healtcare. Back when I started my first full-time job, the healtcare coverage was excellent and 60%+ americans had healthcare coverage though their employers. Then we dropped to about 30%, with ever increasing premiums and deductables, further, the grantors of coverage were weeding out the expensive applicants because of Pre-Existing conditions (and we now have technology available for them to spot people higher risk of certain conditions, that's stacking the deck against people if ever it were.) Now, with the full weight of law we return to First World Status, looking after our people (even if some don't think they want it, everyone really does benefit in one or more ways here.)
While I felt it was a Frankenstein bill, when going through the House and Senate, because one party chose to hold their breath until they turned blue rather than participate (even with provisions they once championed), we at least have something.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
exactly. it's a religion based on myths that depends upon human beings behaving in ways they never have and never will. there is no such thing as a self-regulating marketplace. to be truly free and fair, a marketplace must be regulated. if it is not, the biggest players abuse the smaller ones. always have, always will. in societies with strong governments and regulated marketplaces where the largest players still get away with murder, this is a corruption of our government by those large players that is an argument for curing the sick patient, our government, rather than removing it and handing over the car keys to the sickness that is our enemy: entrenched rent seeking parasitical financial interests
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
i am a capitalist
i just understand it is simply a mindless beast for generating capital. the mindless beast must be harnessed, or it runs roughshod over your society
the choices in this world are not between ayn rand capitalism and stalinesque communism. these are absurd extremes that do not represent real world choices, only bloviating propaganda that no one serious really believes, except for committed WHARGARBBBLE victims like our friend the free market fundamentalist troll roman_mir
the real choices, for thinking people, is moderation: capitalism with social safety nets, or socialism with a capitalist engine grafted on
but don't let prudence, moderation, and careful thought, interfere with your partisan hysteria
(rolls eyes)
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
doing those things, then why shouldn't you have to pay it?
Or do you think the rest of us should have to subsidize your desire to save a few bucks by destroying the earth and not pay a cent for your health care? Because I guarantee that when you have some devasting health problem you will show up at an ER and demand quality care.
"Healthcare" is a limited resource, consisting of the time and money of doctors and nurses, of the people involved in the creation of medical devices, compounds, and procedures. To say you have a "right" to healthcare is to say you have a right to the time and money of other people. Your right to free speech doesn't mean anyone has to provide you the means to speak, the right to keep and bear arms does not mean you will be furnished a gun. This is huge step in blurring the definition of a "right", and in my opinion just pushes us further towards a world with no consequences for failure or motivation to succeed.
Health insurance is not required for healthcare. They are two separate things. If a tree crashes through your roof and you don't have home owner's insurance, you can still get your roof fixed.
What we've done with Obamacare isn't "making healthcare affordable". It has nothing to do with looking at "why" various components of healthcare are expensive, it just bluntly tries to spread the money around and artificially cap expenses. We've basically made private insurance companies tax collectors. Everyone must pay them now. That means you and I are part owners of that big pool of money, and we will be responsible for making sure it never gets drained. With the added burden that now everyone must be covered by health insurance, the 9 pack a day smoker who eats 12 sausage links at each meal and can't leave the house will be free to drain that pool for their cholesterol medications, Mucinex, eventual cancer drugs, etc. But it is up to us to pay more and more to keep that pool full.
There are very few people who legitimately can't work. That group gets even smaller if you throw away the ones who very squarely put themselves in a position of being unprepared for life, whether through their financial idiocy of not saving a dime their entire lives, or just a series of boneheaded moves. There are some people who are poor, and nothing they could have ever reasonably done would have prevented it. But there are very few of those people, relatively speaking. Since we can't distinguish those who absolutely CAN'T do for themselves... the ones who actually NEED welfare... from those who have turned society's safety net into a hammock, our system of welfare is slowly eroding the beauty of life and living free... living and dying with the decisions you make. There are risks in life, there are unfair things that happen, there are unlucky out of nowhere things that will totally F you through no fault of your own. I would hope that people can donate their time, money, skills, kind words, to people in those situations. However, forcing "charity" like this is wrong on so many levels.
We have moved beyond charity. We have been marching towards becoming a society which has grown so used to comfort, so used to easy existence, that when something bad happens it must be someone else's fault, someone else's responsibility to fix. You're the victim because you paid for college and the degree didn't get you a job. You're the victim because you developed cancer. You're the victim because you don't have any money at retirement, but man those apartments you lived in your whole life sure looked good full of rental furniture. You're the victim because you made a sure-thing investment in a house, the value went to shit, and now you're under water.
We have abandoned tightly knit social circles, living within our means, and exchanged them for 700 Facebook friends who don't give a shit about us, 4 flat screen TVs in our apartments, and a thought that retirement is when we are given a bunch of money and get to stop working. We don't have any idea what emergency savings are. We lose our minds and are in complete despair that a car problem will cost us $250, but man Starbucks coffee sure is good every day. We think a 25 year old should still be living under the financial wing of his parents.
If people decided to throw their money into a pot and use it for charitable giving for medical purposes, that woul
You'll be subsidized if you can't afford it. Otherwise, it's pretty much like car insurance, so was the game already over decades ago?
Seriously?
Please name me the US Federal Government Car Insurance Mandate. Oh wait, there isn't one... because the Federal Government mandating car insurance would be unconstitutional. A mandate for car or health care insurance is properly the right of States, not of the Federal government.
Even 5 Supreme Court justices said the US Federal Government Medical Insurance Mandate is unconstitutional. The only reason this slid by is because A) CJ Roberts wanted to use this as a platform to tell Congress to quit using the SC as an alternative to a vote to repeal, and B) magical hand-waving by which the practical implementation of a tax burden to cover health care was enough to not strike down the underlying theory behind the Affordable Care Act.
Obama and the Democrats were idiots for not implementing the "insurance individual mandate" as a tax break / monetary payout to buy health insurance anyways. They could have avoided this entire debate by doing so.
Light a fire for a man and he'll be warm for a day. Light a man on fire and he'll be warm for the rest of his life.
Look, shit head, if you want to have that attitude, then wear a big wrist band that says "DO NOT PROVIDE ME WITH MEDICAL CARE UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES". Add something about religious beliefs or some such nonsense so that when you get in an accident/get seriously sick/have a heart attack/whatever, you aren't forced into participating in the health care system to which you do not want to contribute.
The difference here between health care and auto insurance is that you can opt out of owning a vehicle and driving and not increase the cost for the rest of us. You can't opt out of ever getting sick or injured or otherwise needing medical attention for your entire lifetime. Society generally will not allow you to bleed to death on the side of the road just because you refused to pay for health insurance (or pay the fine/tax imposed by the new law). So whether you like it or not, you *are* participating in the health care system, and you *are* being a selfish asshole for refusing to acknowledge that.
And irony of ironies, getting yourself thrown in prison for refusing to pay for health care (or aforementioned fine/tax) provides you with a government-paid health care plan.
Brilliant of you to play roulette with your health, but I guess no big deal as you can declare bankruptcy if you can't afford a major health catastrophe, or go to the hospital ER if you have no coverage.
It is called a surplus when you are talking about governments. And we actually had one in recent history.
But then we decided to go shopping at the war and tax cuts for the ultra rich shop.
Really, I know what I'm doing...Ohhhh, look at the shiny buttons!
any pretense that the Feds adhered at all to the supposed limited power granted to them under the constitution is shredded.
It was shredded long before this mandate issue.
Unix is user friendly, it's just selective about who its friends are.
gasoline is already taxed (eventhough this tax doesn't cover the full society cost of gasoline): so isn't that tax an unfair imposition on your freedom in the same way that this health care tax is?
> If he doesn't have a tankless heater, he's the one paying the gas bills for the heater.
> If he doesn't have a programmable thermostat, he's the one paying the utility bills.
The taxes on those items don't cover their societal cost. If you think they do then you are naive.
> Yes, you mentioned the ER. The fix to that isn't to impose insurance, it's to remove the requirement that the ER treat those who won't pay their bills.
Now you've crossed from naive to stupid. I would bet every dollar I have that your opinion on this changes as soon as you or a loved one is in the position of needing emergency health care.
Hey, ignoramus. It's possible to pay for medical care without insurance. I do it. Rush Limbaugh does it.
Insurance companies make a lot of money, as is their right. But they are middlemen using their customer's money for their overhead, and that increases prices compared to customer-pays. If the government takes over insurance/health care, the incentive against waste disappears. Either cost increases, quality declines, or some are denied service; there is no other possible outcome.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
Or maybe we notice exactly what is going on, and since we voted Obama in, are quite happy with it. It's a grand day for those of us who voted in Obama...or maybe you forgot we exist?
Otherwise, it's pretty much like car insurance, so was the game already over decades ago?
Of all the lies spewed about this law, this is the most disingenuous. You can choose not to drive. Unless you put a gun to your head, you can't choose not to live.And that's precisely what this law is: a government mandated fee (NOT a tax, that's also BS) for simply being alive.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
Except that it isn't public health care. It is private health care, mandated publicly. You'll notice private companies handle health insurance like Aetna, Blue Cross, and so on. And they still will. These companies are not going away.
Which is, ironically, why this legislation sucks.
Americans pay 16-18% of our per capita GDP in health care costs. France and Switzerland, the two consistently highest rated health care systems on planet Earth, which both offer true universal coverage to all their citizens, cost their people around 11% of per capita GDP.
You will not hear these numbers being touted by Democrats, Republicans, or the media. It isn't in there interests for you to understand how bad things have really gotten in the USA.
Public health care similar to socalled "Obamacare" is commonplace in most of Europe, where the costs are lower and quality is higher (citation needed? LMGTFY).
Why would costs rise and quality decrease in the US? Is there something inherently wrong with the US that they can't make this work as well as in Europe.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
When they can force you to buy something from a private company, game over.
Well of course they're not actually forcing you to buy anything. They're just taxing you if you decide to be an irresponsible fuck and plan to freeride on the rest of us if you ever get sick. But don't let reality get in the way of your paranoia.
Hello Mr. Euro and/or Person who has never lived outside of a big city. Many, many job holders in America who don't live in New England or California live quite a distance from their place of work. Living closer is frequently not an option in these more rural areas. Likewise, public transportation is often woefully inadequate or entirely nonexistent. The vast majority of America's land is actually a pretty low population density with a few high-density cities scattered around.
Do you think part of this may be that the French and Swiss are on average much healthier than the typical U.S. citizen? Since our average population is so incredibly unhealthy the overall risk to insurance companies is much higher, causing costs to rise for all involved.
I'm not stating this as a fact, but asking the question.
Oh I agree. But even the little baby steps we're taking with Obama's health care reform act are being met with all kinds of illogical resistance. It boggles me. People standing in the streets with signs wanting to repeal Obamacare. Even though it has provisions like how you can't be dropped or denied for a pre-existing condition. How in the world could someone be against that? I could see a CEO of a health care company not liking it, but the rest of us? How?
We're so screwed up in this country that you can actually get nearly half the people in the streets shouting that this is a bad idea. I have no idea how you accomplish that, but there you go.
So yeah, anything more invasive like what France has and it's ARRGH SOCIALISM and people would totally lose their minds. Even though it would be in their best interests.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
Yes, I am sure that is what is going to happen. The Tea Party called, and they want their hysterical idiocy back.
Why don't you quote your hero, and the author of this legislation, Obama about this. Look for where he told a woman that her grandmother should just take some aspirin and die instead of getting lifesaving medical care, because she's just to old to spend taxpayer money on.
Obama and his cronies have lied about this legislation from the start. They rammed it through reconciliation because it wasn't a tax bill. Now that they need it to be a tax bill, it is. It was supposed to be under a trillion dollars, and it's already double that, even before much of it has been implemented, and expected to double yet again before it actually starts to do anything. there's not supposed to be "death panels", but they have a panel that can deny lifesaving treatment for any reason they want.
Oh, and those "shovel ready jobs" weren't so "shovel ready". Har har har! Hilarious!
Who would win this election: Andrew Weiner vs Andrew Weiner's weiner.
Well, with Obamacare, NDAA, PATRIOT Act, DHS/TSA, etc etc etc now a fact, your first line about driving becomes:
Remember, in the New USA your continued existence as a non-imprisoned and still-living, breathing, human being is a Privilege, not a Right and can be revoked at any time without due process.
I weep for my country, for it is dead. We now have a "ruling regime", not a government of, by, and for the People. And because I know God is just, I also tremble in fear for my country.
Strat
More hysteria -- I often wonder where such thinking comes from. Now I've got a front row seat.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
And you still didn't prove the "right to drive"! You have the right to use the highways, you have the right to move around freely, in neither of the cases you cited does it ANYWHERE say a person has the "right to drive a motor vehicle".
I am seriously disappointed by the vast majority of comments here. Slashdot generally presents some semblance of caring about facts and citations supporting any claims, but as soon as the ACA comes up, it seems like everyone abandons reason and logic. I want to provide a viewpoint applying those two methods to this topic. Hopefully others interested in the same will chime in.
First, to all the foreigners chiming in claiming to have this same law in their countries, I want to reply, no, you don't, and it doesn't matter if you did. No two laws anywhere are exactly the same, so what you have is not going to be the same as what we have. If you are going to make that claim, I am going to demand you provide a citation for the one or more laws that have the exact same text as ours, along with supporting evidence that it is interpreted legally in the same way. Now, you may fairly claim the intent of the law is the same as the intent of the law in your country, which shifts the discussion to how well the law actually implements the intent, and I'll address that in a moment.
Next, I'll give foreigners the benefit of the doubt and assume the law is identical to one in their country that "works". A problem ignored by foreigners is that basically every other law this country has is different from their laws. The United States is governed by a Constitution that is different than the underlying laws of every other country. So even if it works in your system, we can't just wholesale "borrow" your law and magically expect it to work here. We need a law that is carefully crafted to respect the restrictions in the Constitution (or else pass amendments to the Constitution to provide an exemption in this case) as well as maintain our economy.
For a third point, I'm sick of the partisan whining from the Democrats and Republicans. No, the Republicans are not uncaring bastards who don't care if people die. Neither are the Democrats trying to set up a nanny state where they have complete control of other people's lives. Both parties set up a false dichotomy in which there are only two options when there are actually many more. Republicans value personal freedom as the highest value, where Democrats value livelihood. Both of these are valid viewpoints, and having a different opinion does not turn another person into a monster. If you can't talk about the other party without vilifying them, chances are you are a brainwashed servant of your political party.
Fourth, how well does the law implement the intent? This is the point that disturbs me most, and why I am largely against the law. The law ballooned from one hundred pages to over two thousand in an extremely short time period (something like thirty to forty-five days, if I recall correctly). Basically none of the legislature read the law before passing it. No one bothered to look into how well it met the intent. No one tried to run simulations to estimate how well it would work. No one knows what it will cost (we hear one trillion dollars, but that is just as much a guess as the eight hundred billion "needed" to bail out the banks). Even worse, no one knows what sort of side effects there are. Essentially, the government is gambling that this massive law is going to magically make things better, but given the lack of data about it, there is a fifty percent chance it is going to negatively impact the country, as well as a fifty percent change it will positively impact that country - and then only by drastically simplifying things to the level of American "news" organizations. A law this massive can't even be judged by such simplistic terms. Realistically, some things will work great - I am a big fan of the clause guaranteeing health insurance in spite of pre-existing conditions. Other things will be big problems - the time to see a doctor is likely to increase, something foreigners conveniently forget to mention (or just flat don't realize) in comparison to the current American standard (and what's more, the rich of other nations know it, which is why they traveled to
Remember, you can't look dignified when your having fun! Don't take life too seriously, you'll never get out of it alive
People do not like not being excluded due to pre-existing conditions.
People do not like being force to buy insurance.
Sorry, you can't have it both ways. Otherwise young healthy people wait until they have a problem and then expect to start paying the same rate as everyone else. The function of insurance is to amortize the costs of unexpected (randomly occurring?) events over time and over population. This is broken both by people selectively participating and by companies selectively allowing people to participate. You must eliminate the cheaters on both sides or you really screw one side.
Not passing judgement, just pointing out one of the fundamental issues this law attempts to address.
Well two things.
First thing, if you don't have health insurance and you get sick, who pays? That's right - I do. And everyone else who contributes to the system. But you don't. It's not fair.
Second thing. Health insurance just got a whole lot less scammy now that the reform act is in place. Go read it - you'll see. There's a ton of lousy crap they're not allowed to do now.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
You could brand that on your forehead but if you are unconscious they are obligated to save your life. DNR (Do Not Resuscitate) orders have to be given to ANYONE that could be called to make decisions, this typically means, spouses, parents, children and filed with every single hospital, clinic, ambulance or EMT service you could be serviced by before they would even consider obeying them.
The immense liability of allowing someone to die absolutely guarantees that unless there is someone there with notarized copy of the DNR AND a family relationship that would grant power of attorney that the order will be ignored. Until you deal with this and an elderly or terminal patient you don't realize how hard it is to get medical personal to honor this request. (I understand why, if the document was fake the medical personal would still be liable).
More hysteria -- I often wonder where such thinking comes from. Now I've got a front row seat.
Oh, I'm sorry, I thought that whole thing about the POTUS now being able to imprison or kill US citizens without due process, not to mention the TLA fiascos, GPS tracking, warrant-less searches and data/voice snooping, and everything else that nearly everybody on Slashdot has howled about for a decade under both GWB and Obama (including me) when they were announced actually happened!
Whew! Thanks!
I feel much better now that I know that was all hysteria.
Mass hysteria too, apparently. Good thing everybody will have insurance for the therapy they'll need.
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
Heh. Nice!
Of course, someone who has no truly deeply-held beliefs in individual freedom, the rule of law, or the principles upon which the nation *was* based, will find those that do have such beliefs "overly dramatic" when they protest their trampling. So it has always been with those who think like he does.
Timid men prefer the calm of despotism to the tempestuous sea of liberty." - Thomas Jefferson
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
Son, if all it takes to "trample" the "principles upon which the nation was based" is a law that requires people to have medical insurance, then those were some weak-ass "principles" to begin with.
Now, if you can get up off the fainting couch and stop clutching your pearls for a minute, you might realize that the exact same hysterical sisters were claiming that Social Security was also going to "trample the principles upon which the nation *was* based". And still, the greatest decades of this Nation's history followed that law, too. We ended up as a stronger nation, with more enduring principles because we decided that we were going to make sure that people didn't have to eat cat food when they got old.
Maybe take a minute and realize I'm trying to talk you down off the ledge here. The "principles" that hold this country together were never "The Constitution" or some Burkean fantasy of the Right. The principles that have always held this country together are the ones that say, "We're all in this together" and "Let's get this done" and "Things work better when people aren't selfish assholes".
Until that sinks in, stay in your bunker. I'll knock twice when the zombie health care apocalypse is over and you can come out again and go back to getting your health care from the emergency room. It's really not healthy to live your life in such fear and dread, you know.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Yes, I am sure that is what is going to happen. The Tea Party called, and they want their hysterical idiocy back.
Yes, they have a few doozies:
"I got a letter the other day from a woman. She said, 'I don't want government-run health care. I don't want socialized medicine. And don't touch my Medicare." (some anonymous woman ot th ePresident) Arthur Laffer
"If you like the post office and the Department of Motor Vehicles and you think they're run well, just wait till you see Medicare, Medicaid and health care done by the government.
Simply brilliant! The biggest problem with Medicare is that weird "Donut hole". Courtesy of?
This is why the right wing comes off like a pack of retarded children. They take the perfectly acceptable point of view that government should be minimalistic and non-intrusive, and warp it until they look like a pack of asylum escapees.
That comes from catering to people who can hold two or more conflicting viewpoints at the same time.
Further, there was a lot of activity on Twitter today from the rabid right from people who were declaring they were going to move to Canada. See how that works? Hate "Amercia" because they have some sort of universal healthcare? the fix is to move to Canada, which has a single payer healthcare system. Makes no sense until you realize it is part of the dissonance.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
You answered your own question: USA *has* world-class healthcare for the most affluent people, those who have top-notch insurance or can afford to pay.
But on the *average* US healthcare is both more expensive, and poorer than that of all other similarly wealthy democratic countries I can think of. This makes a lot of sense: benefits of healthcare is diminishing-return, i.e. you get more additional health by spending $1000 more on someone who has no or very limited access to healthcare than you get by spending the same $1000 on someone who already have very good healthcare.
USA does the latter. The very good are turned into EXCELLENT. That's fine and good for those people who belong to that segment.
Meanwhile most other wealthy democracies are much better at turning poor into good. And this gives more benefits for less money. You do more for public health by going poor to good than by going very_good to excellent, it's also cheaper.
The main reason USA doesn't have socialized healthcare long ago, is that essentially all of the people with power and influence in USA belong to the "very good" category. For *them* it makes perfect sense to prefer very good to excellent instead of poor to good.