Two Years On: Obamacare

You can roll your eyes all you want. The government can force you to buy wheat. That's the decision on point.

The only way you go the other way is to treat this case as sui generis.

They might do that. But the case law all points in one direction.

 

It's an odd little house of cards.

Everyone uses health insurance to pay for ordinary health insurance costs, because the government heavily incentivized (sp?) employers to provide health insurance plans for their workers.

People without health insurance pass their costs on to the rest of us, because the government forced private health care providers to treat people who couldn't pay for it. (And no, I'm not saying that letting people die would be better).

So now, because health insurance is the way everyone pays for medical care, and everyone uses medical care, the government has to be able to force everyone to buy health insurance.

If the government wasn't slapping on so many half-baked band-aids to the health-care problems of this country, we wouldn't need to be having this argument about another half-baked band-aid.

 

I shouldn't have posted what I did, Rick. What I should've said is that the Supreme Court shows little to no inclination to object to those government powers, not you.

 

Well there appear to be several justices with distinguished careers and decades of legal experience who find your "slam dunk" to be a little more murky.

 

Which is why I ultimately expect they'll let this one slide, too. They really like to defer to other branches whenever they possibly can.

 

You're going to appeal to the authority of the conservatives on the Supreme Court?

 

Not for long.

 

But they're all hacks...

 

Prediction time:

6-3 upholding the law.

The four liberal justices clearly uphold. Kennedy joins them on the condition that the decision make it very clear that this is a unique case because of the health-care industry and cannot be extended elsewhere (the sort of wishy-washy crap that made Bush v. Gore so silly), and then Roberts joins in to avoid the controversy of a 5-4 decision.

 

The way insurance works means that SOME central authority provides it and makes the rules. Otherwise the math doesn't work. We have increasingly large corporations provide it through businesses which get certain tax benefits and to their employees who rightly regard it as an essential payment better than making a much higher salary. It's not a very well-structured system. Unfortunately, the only systems that'd be more effective would require about one-sixth of the U.S. economy's participants to take big pay cuts, including people like doctors with political clout. Not to single out doctors. Nurses and other hospital workers have clout, too.
Look, I'd quit my job right now except for the insurance. I'd do something else in the couple years I have left before retirement age. It's not like broccoli or a car. Medicine is a product you MUST buy. So if the government says you MUST buy it in a certain way, why is that a beef? Doesn't change the facts on the ground.
I look forward to the thread when the Court throws out the Voting Rights Act, which it's dying to do. Another blow for freedom.

 

Yes, for the issue of whether or not this is an easy case.

Your continued assertion that this is a "slam dunk" case is more than a little grating, especially given the mounting evidence against you.

 

Guess I missed the announcement that this Court had it in for the Voting Rights Act.