Obamacare: Unfair to the young middle class, punished enough already

"For 'tis the sport to see the engineer
Hoist with his own petar..."

Today's chapter in the book of Obamacare comes from a young free-lance writer in California who is discovering that a) someone has to pay for free healthcare and b) apparently, he's someone.

Under my old plan, my maximum out-of-pocket expense was $4,900. Under the new plan, I’m on the hook for up to $6,350. Copays for my doctor visits will double. For urgent-care visits, they will quadruple. Though slightly cheaper plans exist if I decide to shop around on the exchange, I will lose my dental coverage should I switch.

Needless to say, I am not pleased.

Most young, middle-class Americans I know are happy that millions of previously uninsured people will receive free or heavily subsidized insurance under the Affordable Care Act.

We just didn’t realize that, unless we had health insurance at work, we’d be the ones paying for it.

My reaction?



You know, people tried to tell you this, but you didn't want to listen. No, you thought, only greedy people would be opposed to this. And besides, you aren't rich - it's not going to impact you. Someone else is going to pay for it!

And I'm reminded, as has happened so many times during this administration, of Atlas Shrugged. This time, the plan at the 20th Century Motor Factory...

There wasn't a man voting for it who didn't think that under a setup of this kind he'd muscle in on the profits of the men abler than himself. There wasn't a man rich and smart enough but that he didn't think that somebody was richer and smarter, and this plan would give him a share of his better's wealth and brain. But while he was thinking that he'd get unearned benefits from the men above, he forgot about all his ingeriors who'd rush to drain him just as he hped to drain his superiors. The worker who liked the idea that his need entitled him to a limousine like his boss's, forgot that every bum and beggar on earth would come howling that their need entitled them to an icebox like his own. That was our real motive when we voted - that was the the truth of it - but we didn't like to think it, so the less we liked it, the louder we yelled about our love for the common good.

Apparently, Matthew Fleischer's love for the common good last just until it started to cost him personally.

What was obviously a lie turns out to have been ... a lie

As even the mainstream press seems to be coming to the conclusion that maybe, just maybe, the President oversold the "Affordable Care Act," I look back to what I wrote about it four years ago.

So they can put together a bill that's going to a) add 15 (or 30 or 47, depending on the President's mood, apparently) million people to the insurance rolls b) while providing improved care c) at lower cost for everyone d) and allowing everyone to keep the coverage they've already got if they want to e) and not increasing the budget deficit f) or increasing taxes¹, but they can't post that freakin' bill on the internet?...

It boggles my mind that anyone can watch any part of this process and think, "yes, this is how we're going to make the health care system better for everyone! What could possibly go wrong?"


¹ - Every time I write that out, I vacillate between giggling and rage. I giggle that the preposterousness of the suggestion, that there's somehow, some way that increased government intervention is going to lead to any one of those things happening, never mind all six simultaneously, and rage that the President of the United States actually thinks that the US citizens are stupid enough to buy it. He doesn't even have enough respect for the people of this country to try a plausible argument.

Romney and Obama: Both Wrong on Medicare

Michael D. Tanner:

Let's try to put the ongoing debate over the future of Medicare into a little bit of context. Last year, Americans paid $274 billion in Medicare taxes and premiums. At the same time, the program paid out $564 billion in benefits. That amounts to a shortfall of roughly $290 billion. Looking into the future, even the most optimistic estimate by the program's trustees puts Medicare's future unfunded liabilities at more than $38.6 trillion. More realistic projections suggest the shortfall could easily top $90 trillion.

Faced with this ocean of red ink, the Obama and Romney campaigns are busy claiming that the other guy wants to cut Medicare. They, on the other hand, would never think for a moment about cutting anyone's Medicare benefits. Hello. Can anyone out there do math?

Yup. As I noted last week, the medicare attack from the Romney campaign is, at best, a mixed blessing.

On the other hand, again, Ryan has demonstrated that he can do the math. And realistically, you cannot take it away from people who have planned, and depend, on it. But you cannot maintain it in perpetuity, either...

Paid In

Hmm... I wonder what the Obama supporters will claim is the lie in this one?

Paid In

Rights, guns and health care...

One variation on a theme, spotted ricocheting around various social media outlets:

There is something wrong with a constitution that guarantees your right to a gun, but not your right to health care.

That depends entirely upon what one believes the purpose of a constitution to be.

The first problem with that statement is one of definition. The people issuing this lament are taking advantage of a conflation of terms, using the word "right" in two different ways. The "right to a gun" that the Constitution guarantees, and which they do not support, is a restriction on Government action, a "negative" right. The "right to health care" that they wish the Constitution did support, is a call for Government action, the institution of an affirmative or positive right. If the Constitution said the same thing about health care that it says about guns, that would not be good enough. A health care amendment that paralleled the 2nd amendment would read something like this

A healthy populace being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to seek and obtain health care services shall not be infringed.

Which brings us to the second problem with that lament.  There's a reason that the Constitution does not forbid the Government from infringing on the right to seek and obtain health care, and that's because there was no need for it to do so. The framers of the Constitution had no concern that the government would infringe on liberty, and move towards despotism, by taking away people's doctor visits and hospitals. They had good reason to be concerned that a government would infringe on liberty, and descend towards despotism, by taking away people's guns, or taking away the right to freely assemble and criticize the government, or taking away the right to trial by jury, or by instituting excessive bails, or by performing unreasonable searches and seizures. All of those things are explicitly called out as limitations on the power of the Government. None of those are "affirmative" rights, requiring the Government to act - they are all "natural" or "negative" rights, defining the relationship of the Government and the Governed, and enumerating rights which the Governed are presumed to hold naturally, and which the Government must not violate.

If that "health care amendment" I included above were all that the supporters of a "right to health care" meant, then I would agree with their position, because it's self-evidently a legitimate negative right. But that's not what they mean, that's not what they want, and so I do not agree with them. They do not want a "negative" right to health care, in which the Government is enjoined from infringing on that right. They want a social contract that includes an affirmative right to health care, that the Government is required to provide.  That is to say, they wish to assert an obligation on the part of their fellow citizens to provide health care for them.  More than that, many of them believe that such a right is self-evidently an unadulterated good, so much so that those of us who think that such a "right" would lead to worsening the human condition rather than improving it, must be "greedy" and bad people.

And so, as with so many issues, it is almost impossible to have a discussion on the issue.  Those on the left have already made up their minds that the people opposing them are bad, so what they've got to say is irrelevant.  After all, who cares what bad people have to say?  It's the same thing that happens with abortion, and affirmative action, and gay marriage.  Once you've decided that your opponents are misogynists or racists or homophobes, well, obviously it doesn't matter what their arguments are...

Obamacare odds and ends...

From the Washington Examiner, CSPAN requests televised Obamacare oral arguments:

CSPAN chairman Brian Lamb wrote Chief Justice John Roberts today requesting that he break with Supreme Court tradition and allow for a televised broadcast of the oral arguments in the Obamacare case.

We believe the public interest is best served by live television coverage of this particular oral argument," Lamb wrote. "It is a case which will affect every American's life, our economy, and will certainly be an issue in the upcoming presidential campaign."

I'd watch...

Investor's Business Daily suggests that Elena Kagan should recuse herself from the Obamacare case:

Here are the facts on Kagan: She was the administration's solicitor general when ObamaCare became law last year. She has acknowledged that she was at a meeting in which state litigation against ObamaCare was discussed, though she said she was not involved in any legal responses concerning the states' litigation.

We also know that Kagan enthusiastically supported ObamaCare. This is made clear in emails released last week by the Justice Department.

"I hear they have the votes, Larry!! Simply amazing," Kagan wrote on the day ObamaCare passed the House in an email to Laurence Tribe, the Harvard law professor who was working at that time in the Obama Justice Department...Nearly lost in this is the possibility that Kagan lied during her confirmation. She told the Senate Judiciary Committee that she had not been asked about the legal issues of ObamaCare nor had she offered any views on them. The emails, however, seem to tell a different story. Two exclamation points plainly show that in her legal opinion, ObamaCare was constitutional.

I have two things to say about that. The first is that the editorial is clearly correct about her conflict of interest and pre-expressed opinion - she's made it clear that there's no chance of her even considering the possibility that it might be unconstitutional, so that recusal is the only ethical approach. The second is that Barack Obama will demand that Congress repeal it before that happens. Zero chance.

Walter Russell Meade comments on a New York Times story of one of the unexpected consequences of Obamacare:

the New York Times reports that the controversial health care reform act has accelerated the destruction of small medical practices at the expense of large firms. And if the Times is right, these are part of some fundamental changes in the American health care system that no Supreme Court decision can undo...Is this what the social engineers who redesigned the American health care system really wanted to do? Is big better in health care, and is bigger still better still?

If the Times is right, so far the principal effect of the plan has been to accelerate the decline of family doctors and small medical practices in favor of larger, bureaucratic health care providers along the lines of HMOs.

Unintended or not? As we say in the software world, bug or feature? Well, let's just consider, for a moment, that age-old question, cui bono? Who benefits? Probably not the patients or the doctors, who end up breaking what is ideally a long-term and important relationship. But the politicians, who are then able to extract their tribute graft campaign contributions from a few large medical entities more dependent on their good will as opposed to many smaller entities less dependent on their good will certainly seem to.

Whether that was intended or just, from the politicians' point-of-view, a "happy accident" doesn't seem particularly relevant...



H/T: Instapundit, who linked all of these...

Why "the market" has "failed" for health care...

There's something in this Washington Examiner editorial that is fundamental to the issue of health care in the United States. Fundamental, widely unknown and almost never publicly discussed.

Price signals, a staple of any functioning free market, have been muffled in health care, where third parties (insurers and the government) pay roughly 88 percent of health care costs, up from 52 percent in 1960. Because patients don't pay the bills, most of them have no idea how much services cost, let alone what they are worth. This leaves doctors and hospitals in a competitive vacuum where price and value bear little relation to one another.

When people talk about health care as a good for which the market doesn't work, and therefore the government needs to step in, they're completely missing the point that, for the most part, the market isn't working because it's been broken by the intervention of the government.

Q: Why do so many people have health insurance as a "fringe benefit" of their employment rather than purchasing an appropriate policy themselves?
A: Government intervention in the market.

While its origins can be traced back to 1929, when a group of Dallas teachers contracted with a hospital to cover inpatient services for a fixed annual premium, the link between employment and private health insurance was strengthened by three key government decisions in the 1940s and 1950s. First, during World War II the War Labor Board ruled that wage and price controls did not apply to fringe benefits such as health insurance, leading many employers to institute ESI. Second, in the late 1940s the National Labor Relations Board ruled that health insurance and other employee benefit plans were subject to collective bargaining. Third, in 1954 the Internal Revenue Service decreed that health insurance premiums paid by employers were exempt from income taxation.

Q: What is the consumer view of the price of health care services as fee-for-service is replaced by fee-for-insurance, with no direct costs associated with consumption of services?
A: The per-service price has dropped.

Q: On a demand curve, what happens to quantity demanded as price drops?
A: It increases.

Q: So, it's pretty clear that the transition to "insurer pays" theoretically increases demand for health care services. Has that actually happened?
A: Clearly.

Q: So, what happens in a market when quantity demanded increases?
A: Well, quantity supplied must increase to match it. Or there are going to be shortages.

Q: What makes quantity supplied increase?
A: Increased prices.

Q: But the increased prices would then cause the quantity demanded to drop, would it not?
A: Well, it would if the consumers were paying the service prices. But they are not. The purchasers of services are insurance companies and government agencies, not the consumers of those services. So the price goes up for the purchasers of health care insurance, but that price is disconnected from the price for the purchasers of health care services.

Price is a feedback mechanism. Price drops, quantity demanded increases and quantity supplied drops, until you reach an equilibrium, a point at which the price makes the quantities demanded and supplied the same. That's "the market" in action. But when the consumer of the services is not paying the cost of those services directly, there's no feedback mechanism, no incentive not to use the services. In fact, the incentive is opposite - "I'm paying for the insurance, the insurance will cover it, why not go do it?" Whether the "it" is an MRI for a migraine or an office visit for a cold or an emergency room visit for a muscle pull, if you're paying for coverage but not services, you're much, MUCH more likely to consume the services than if you were paying for them directly.

That's why it's infuriating to listen to people say that "the market doesn't work" in health care. There is no "market" in health care, and hasn't been for a long time. The consumers of services rarely, if ever, pay directly for services, so there are no direct controls on prices. And there's no price control on consumption.

And that's why Obamacare is a plan that moves in exactly the wrong direction to deal with the problems that we have. Our health care issues stem from rising demand for services, and the partisan plan that the Democrats rammed through last year does nothing whatsoever to curb that demand. It further increases the disconnect between the consumers of services and the payers of those services. The only conceivable result of that plan is forced rationing. Economically, there is no other option.

Another judge rules Obamacare unconstitutional

I said last July, that "for many of us, [Obamacare] will feed our desires to say "I told you so" for the rest of our lives..."

Well, I told you so...

Justice Roger Vinson of the U.S. District Court in Pensacola ruled today that the primary mechanism used by the health reform legislation to achieve universal insurance coverage–the individual mandate–is illegal. If his ruling stands it would void the 2,700 page health reform bill passed last year.

“Because the individual mandate is unconstitutional and not severable, the entire Act must be declared void. This has been a difficult decision to reach, and I am aware that it will have indeterminable implications,” Vinson writes.

Now, we don't know what Justice Kennedy will have for breakfast when the case is heard the Supreme Court will eventually decide, but I think it's pretty clear, at this point, that the contention that many of us made that this piece of legislation was not constitutional was not frivolous.

Health Care Repeal Won't Add to the Deficit

There's an excellent op-ed in the Wall Street Journal this morning By Douglas Holtz-Eakin, Joseph Antos and James C. Capretta¹, on the argument still being made that Obamacare reduces the Federal Government's long term fiscal problems. Apparently, this material cannot be presented often enough...

A close examination of CBO's work and other evidence undercuts [the] budget-busting argument about repeal and leads to the exact opposite conclusion, which is that repeal is the logical first step toward restoring fiscal sanity.
...
Next up is the CLASS Act (for the Community Living Assistance Services and Supports Act) providing a new long-term care insurance entitlement. CLASS hitched a ride on the ACA for one reason only: premiums are collected in the first ten years, but no benefits are provided. Voila, it creates the perception of $70 billion in deficit reduction. In fact, CLASS is a bailout waiting to happen, as it will attract mainly sick enrollees. Only in Washington could the creation of a reckless entitlement program be used as "offset" to grease the way for another entitlement.

Go ahead. Read it all. And don't ever buy the argument that an unlimited, open-ended Federal entitlement program is somehow the rock on which a solid fiscal house can be built...



¹ - Mr. Holtz-Eakin is president of the American Action Forum and a former director of CBO. Mr. Antos is Wilson Taylor Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and a former assistant director at CBO. Mr. Capretta is a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center and a former associate director at the Office of Management and Budget.

House Set to Launch Health Law Challenge

Remember how the Democrats reached across the aisle during the health care debate? Remember how every Republican objection was respected? How they sought for a bipartisan compromise and avoided any hint of partisanship? Remember the high "tone" of the debate, the respect for those that disagreed, from President "I won" Obama all the way down to Rep. "Republicans want you to just die quickly" Grayson?

Yeah, me neither. But they're all for it now...

Democratic Rep. James Clyburn told Fox News he welcomes the upcoming debate. "The question is, what will be the tone?" he added, urging Republicans to stop describing the bill as "job-killing." [LB: "because that makes it harder for us to get re-elected when we support it."]

Clyburn predicted that an all-out repeal would go nowhere. But he indicated a willingness to "modify" parts of the legislation that could be improved.

"I believe that we all remember that when we passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, we had to modify three or four times -- it was done in a bipartisan way. Same thing with the Voting Rights Act. So let us modify the health care law in a bipartisan way. But this whole stuff of repealing it, throwing it out and starting all over, that's not going to happen," the South Carolina congressman said.

I actually had a fairly strong reaction to this. But I'm watching my words now, trying to elevate and maintain a "civil" level of discourse. So let me just say this:

Dear Representative Clyburn,

Go to hell.

Sincerely...

Orphan Drug Discounts Ended for Children’s Hospitals

They passed it, so we can find out what's in it...

In an unintended consequence of the new health care law, drug companies have begun notifying children’s hospitals around the country that they no longer qualify for large discounts on drugs used to treat rare medical conditions.

As a result, prices are going up for these specialized “orphan drugs,” some of which are also used to treat more common conditions.

Over the last 18 years, Congress has required drug manufacturers to provide discounts to a variety of health care providers, including community health centers, AIDS clinics and hospitals that care for large numbers of low-income people.

Several years ago, Congress broadened the program to include children’s hospitals. But this year Congress, in revising the drug discount program as part of the new health care law, blocked these hospitals from continuing to receive price cuts on orphan drugs intended for treatment of diseases affecting fewer than 200,000 people in the United States.

So my question for all of the Obamacare supporters out there is this - why were you so eager to cut off drugs for sick children? That's seems pretty heartless and greedy to me, cutting off drugs for sick kids to satisfy your own desires...

The Emerging Consensus

I hope that Yuval Levin is right about The Emerging Consensus

Between the Simpson-Bowles proposal, the Rivlin-Ryan proposal, the Domenici-Rivlin proposal (which came from outside the commission), and a number of other ideas thrown around in recent weeks, people in the center and on the right (helped no doubt by the election results) appear to be moving closer together on the question of what our highest domestic priority must now be. There is growing agreement in American politics that the challenge of our time is cleaning up the horrible mess created by the Great Society—the mess that is our approach to domestic discretionary spending but above all the mess that is our health-care entitlement system. That is the essence of our debt and deficit problems.

This is what the people in the Tea Parties understand, and what those criticizing the Tea Partiers don't, yet...

In which I agree with the President. Again.

Press Conference

I think we’d be misreading the election if we thought that the American people want to see us for the next two years relitigate arguments that we had over the last two years.

Absolutely true. The American people very clearly, I think, said that they don't want to spend two more years "re-litigating" the health care debate. They don't want to redebate the health care bill, they want to repeal it. They've been saying so for the past 18 months. They screamed it out with the election of Scott Brown in January. You didn't listen then, are you listening now? They don't want that bill. They want it repealed.

Period. End of discussion.

More Republican Lies!

In the pages of that purveyor of conservative agitprop known as the ... er ...New York Times...

The Principal Financial Group announced on Thursday that it planned to stop selling health insurance, another sign of upheaval emerging among insurers as the new federal health law starts to take effect.

The company, based in Iowa, provides coverage to about 840,000 people who receive their insurance through an employer.

Principal’s decision closely tracks moves by other insurers that have indicated in recent weeks that they plan to drop out of certain segments of the market, like the business of selling child-only policies. State regulators say some insurance companies are already threatening to leave particular markets because of the new law. And some regulators in states like Maine and Iowa have asked the Obama administration to give insurers more time to comply with some of the new rules.

I know this must be a lie, because President Obama said, over and over again, repeatedly and forcefully, that "if you have insurance you like, you'll be able to keep that insurance."

Well, maybe this isn't a Republican lie. Maybe nobody actually liked their Principal Financial Group insurance...

Abortion, Third-Party Payer, and the Cost of Health Care

Abortion, Third-Party Payer, and the Cost of Health Care:

A major problem with America’s health care system, both before and after Obamacare, is the fact that consumers very rarely spend their own money when obtaining health care. Known as third-party payer, this problem exists in part because government directly finances almost 50 percent of health care expenditures. But even a majority of supposedly private health care spending is financed by employer-provided policies that are heavily distorted by a preference in the tax code that encourages insurance payments even for routine expenses. According to government data, only 12 percent of health care costs are financed directly by consumers. And since consumers almost always are buying health care with somebody else’s money, it should come as no surprise that this system results in rising costs and inefficiency. This is why repealing Obamacare is just the first step that is needed if policymakers genuinely want to restore a free market health care system...

I've said this before, I know, but it's the kind of thing that cannot be said often enough. I have insurance on my house, but when I need to re-shingle the roof or replace a window, I don't file a claim. The insurance is there for catastrophic events. I have insurance on my car, but if I get the oil changed or replace the battery or the tires or the alternator, I don't file a claim. The insurance is there for catastrophic events.

Well, why is health insurance different? Why, when I go in to have my yearly physical, doesn't the doctor just charge me a price that we negotiate beforehand, and have me pay it? Why is an insurance company involved? Why, when my child has strep throat and needs an antibiotic, is the insurance company involved? The insurance should be there for things that are, well, catastrophic. The stuff that requires big expenses, the conditions that most people don't get most of the time.

The disconnect between the consumer of services and the actual cost of services is one of the largest drivers, if not the single largest driver, of rising costs in the American health care system. The people who supported Obamacare due to fear of "spiraling costs" supported the worst thing that could happen to health care costs.

Unintended consequences? What are those?

Hmm... I wonder how Henry Waxman is going to prevent this kind of unintended consequence...

Thousands of consumers are gaming Massachusetts’ 2006 health insurance law by buying insurance when they need to cover pricey medical care, such as fertility treatments and knee surgery, and then swiftly dropping coverage, a practice that insurance executives say is driving up costs for other people and small businesses.

In 2009 alone, 936 people signed up for coverage with Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Massachusetts for three months or less and ran up claims of more than $1,000 per month while in the plan. Their medical spending while insured was more than four times the average for consumers who buy coverage on their own and retain it in a normal fashion, according to data the state’s largest private insurer provided the Globe.

...

The problem is, it is less expensive for consumers — especially young and healthy people — to pay the monthly penalty of as much as $93 imposed under the state law for not having insurance, than to buy the coverage year-round. This is also the case under the federal health care overhaul legislation signed by the president, insurers say.

Oh, well. I'm sure the central planners have got a great solution for this problem, a solution with no other unintended consequences...

Health care discussion

UPDATE2: Content added on 3/24 at 6:36 AM - scroll down
UPDATE: Content added on 3/22 at 9:34 AM - scroll down
Original Post added on 3/22 at ~8:00 AM

I've heard it said that a fanatic is one who can't change his mind and won't change the subject. I may be a fanatic, at this point, with regards this so-called "health-care reform" bill, soon to be signed-into law despite its glaring constitutional deficiencies. There are likely to be several posts about this before the week is over, mostly saying the same things, or linking to other people saying the same things. If you are as sick of this whole topic as I am, this may irritate you. And there's certainly a possibility that I'm just going to stop, because rather than releasing frustration, every keystroke and article read are increasing it.

So consider yourself warned.



Some health care thoughts from discussions I've had elsewhere with Someone Else (SE)¹. This may get longer as the day goes on...


LB: I would love to have someone explain a) where the United States Constitution empowers the federal government to require that individual citizens purchase health insurance, and b) how this legislation will cut the federal budget deficit.

SE: a) The same place where it says Congress may make laws???

LB: That's not good enough. The Congress has limited powers which are specifically enumerated in article 1, sections 7 & 8. If they've got the power to make you buy health insurance, it's in one of those. I don't see it - maybe you could point it out to me. One would assume that would also mean that they have the power to make you buy diapers or cat food or velvet Elvis paintings or dwarf pornography, if that were to strike their fancy. If not, if you really think that Congress doesn't have the power to make you buy products you don't want, how is health insurance any different? If you do believe that they've got that power, well, your property isn't your property anymore, is it? You'd best hope they decide to let you keep it, since you've decided that you've no right to it.

SE: b) reduce the overall costs of Medicare and Medicaid (Oh, my, government run socialized health care!!).

LB: What experience with government, at any level, has convinced you that it's capable of doing ANYTHING efficiently? What on earth makes you think that Medicare and Medicaid are going to get less expensive now that the government's going to put more people on them? What government agency have you ever seen run more efficiently, effectively and cheaply than a comparable private enterprise?

SE: I think I'd look at the issue from another angle. Defeat of health care reform in Congress is the only obstacle to its fruition. Can you realistically foresee a constitutional challenge to the legislation?

LB: Are you suggesting that this somehow does NOT get a constitutional challenge?

"Attorneys general in three states — Virginia, Florida and South Carolina — have indicated they will file legal challenges to the measure, on the grounds that it violates the Constitution by requiring individuals to purchase insurance."

NY Times

There's a large group of state attorney's general who had a conference call last night and are planning a multi-state lawsuit. "We plan to file the moment Obama signs the bill. I anticipate him signing it tomorrow. Check back for an update at that time. I will post a link to the lawsuit when it is filed. It will lay out why the bill is unconstitutional and tramples individual and states rights."

http://www.facebook.com/TexansForAbbott/posts/107160575974748

Now, what the courts will do with is anyone's guess, but it's absolutely going to the courts. That's not even a question.

Look, we're either governed by a Constitution which means something or we're not. The powers of Congress are enumerated in Article I, section 8. Keep in mind that the 10th amendment decrees that "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people." Now go back to Article I, section 8, and tell me where the constitutional authority for forcing citizens to purchase any specific product is. (Hint: The reason it's hard to find is that IT ISN'T IN THERE!)

UPDATE: Bumped at 9:34 AM

SE: No suggestion of that at all. I'm simply looking at the likelyhood of success of the challenge as telling.

No doubt the challenge will have an excellent argument as you've intimated, however the view is clearly partisan and the speed and urgency of its timing smacks of political drama more than anything.

LB: Seriously, is the Constitution a partisan document? If the Federal Government has the power to force citizens to buy a product, from whence does that power spring? Cite me an article and section, quote some text.

Again, I don't know what the courts will do. They've allowed the federal government to do a great many things which are not sanctioned by the Constitution. That doesn't mean that they'll allow this, but who knows?

But if it's a partisan argument to be saying, "hey, the Constitution is supposed to limit the power of the federal government, and We The People have NOT granted them the power to take this step," then hell yes, I'm partisan. I know for damned sure which side of that argument I want to be on.

It isn't enough that someone thinks that it might be a good idea. It isn't enough that Nancy Pelosi has the best intentions in the world (a premise which I don't grant anyway, but for purposes of discussion...) It wasn't enough that Richard Nixon's men thought it was vital to the national interest that he be re-elected, or that he thought it was important to preserve the prerogatives of the executive branch. If the Constitution doesn't give them the right to do it, they can't do it, and you can't acquiesce even if you like the result. Because once you've ceded this ground, how do you argue against the next thing, the one that you DON'T like? How do you argue when they pass a law decreeing that all American citizens must purchase a gym membership and food from specified "healthy food" dealers, because after all, it's for their own good? Either there's a legitimate constitutional power being exercised here or there's not. If not (and I believe that there's not), they must not be allowed to do it. If there is, show me where in the document that it comes from.

UPDATE2 (4/24):
SE: Repeal it? Really? Wow. Huh. Unconstitutional? Really? Huh. Don't think I've ever seen so much kicking and screaming among supposed adults. Or so much sore loser-ness. 'But Daddy! sniffle...cry...I want the Big ice cream cone!! And I don't want anyone else to have ANY!

LB: The high deficit concern on the part of Republican voters has been there for years - disgusted conservatives are a big part of the reason that the Democrats won the Congress in 2006, at which point in time, the deficit explosion began. Before that, it was trending downward.

http://lyflines.blogspot.com/2010/01/disconnect-between-rhetoric-and-reality.html

And if you believe that the Federal Government is constitutionally empowered to force a private individual to purchase some good or service from a private company, please show me, article and section, from whence that power derives. Because I don't see it. I think that the "individual mandate" is unconstitutional. Blatantly. I've yet to see a compelling argument that it's not.

And it's just plain wrong to be forcing people to buy things they don't want. Seriously, if the government can make you purchase health insurance, what can't they make you purchase? And why not? Where's the constitutional prohibition on making all citizens subscribe to pay pornography channels to keep the adult film business in the black? Yeah, they're probably not going to do that, but if they wanted to, is it your position that it would be constitutionally permissible? If it isn't, how is it that they can make a single man buy health insurance that includes (and charges for) pediatric, gynecological and maternity services?

We live, at least theoretically, in a constitutional Republic. Our representatives are supposed to be bound by the constitution. If you, as apparently they, don't give a damn what the constitution says, then be honest and say it. But don't whine and moan when those of us who do believe that the government should be bound by it express that.

As for repeal, that can't happen with Obama in the White House. But a majority of the American people, according to all of the polling data, did not want this bill and still don't. The bill's been 10+ points underwater in the polls for seven months now, and they still bribed congresspeople and twisted arms and forced it through. It's a constitutional abomination. It has special deals all over the place, including airports for Bart Stupak's district, every other state paying Nebraska's share of the Medicare costs in exchange for Ben Nelson's Christmas Eve vote, etc.

And that "don't want anyone else to have any" is a disgusting comment. The idea that this bill is going to make anything better for anyone is a fantasy. This is a delusional bill that allows the people who support it to climb into bed at night secure in their virtue, because they "care" about "the less fortunate," and ignore the fact that it's going to drive up costs, drive up premiums, put people out of work, put companies out of business, stop innovation and bring the country closer to the brink of bankruptcy. But hey, it's those EEEEVIL Republicans that don't care about anyone...



¹ - Someone Else is two different people at first posting - again, that may change...

What is, and what should be

Headlines:
Boston Globe:

Historic YEA on Health

New York Times

Congress Sends White House Landmark Health Overhaul

Washington Post

House passes health-care reform bill without Republican votes

This is a little less snappy, but more accurate:

Democrats overcome bipartisan opposition, ram through Constitutional abomination

This used to be a free country...

A cheerful assessment from Mark Steyn:

governmentalized health care not only changes the relationship of the citizen to the state but the very character of the people. As I wrote in NR recently, there's plenty of evidence to support that from Britain, Canada and elsewhere.

More prosaically, it's also unaffordable. That's why one of the first things that middle-rank powers abandon once they go down this road is a global military capability. If you take the view that the US is an imperialist aggressor, congratulations: You can cease worrying. But, if you think that America has been the ultimate guarantor of the post-war global order, it's less cheery. Five years from now, just as in Canada and Europe two generations ago, we'll be getting used to announcements of defense cuts to prop up the unsustainable costs of big government at home. And, as the superpower retrenches, America's enemies will be quick to scent opportunity.

Longer wait times, fewer doctors, more bureaucracy, massive IRS expansion, explosive debt, the end of the Pax Americana, and global Armageddon. Must try to look on the bright side...

It's tough to overstate the magnitude of what Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi have wrought this afternoon. Tom Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern said, "here must have been a moment at the beginning, where we could have said no." We passed that moment, apparently, in November of 2008, because the American people have been saying "NO" furiously, at the top of their lungs for at least the last nine months and here we are anyway. Too many people went to the polls and "sinned in haste," having now to "repent at leisure."

Datta: what have we given?
My friend, blood shaking my heart
The awful daring of a moment's surrender
Which an age of prudence can never retract

- T.S. Eliot

I wonder if Michelle Obama is proud to be an American tonight? Other than the abandonment of millions of Vietnamese to the communist north, I cannot think of a more disgraceful act by the United States Congress in my lifetime.

The United States of America may or may not outlive this mistake, but I don't expect that I will...

Bart Stupak...

...has caved. He's accepted the worthless word of Barack Obama that he'll issue a worthless executive order and the plain language of the "health care" reform bill which everyone on both sides admits allows federal funding to be used for abortions will somehow not be used to allow federal funding to be used for abortions.

Bart Stupak needs a title, something that represents his true contribution to this effort. So I propose that he hereafter be known as "Bart Stupak - the father of government-funded abortions."

Bart "Confiscator of Tax Dollars For Abortions" Stupak