Free Republic

Federal Powers: Where in the U.S. Constitution does it say the government can force people to buy health insurance? And by what authority does it prohibit the purchasing of insurance across state lines?A key part of the administration's plan to reform health care is what is called the "individual mandate" — a requirement that everyone must have health insurance either through his or her employer or purchased individually. A good chunk of the uninsured are that way of their own volition. They are young and healthy and feel they have better things to do with their money at this point...

The chairman of the Senate Finance Committee wants levies on insurers to pay for Obamacare and fines for families who don't sign up. To keep Obamacare alive, Baucus has proposed a Rube Goldberg scheme of fees and fines on insurers and the uninsured designed to forcibly bring everyone into the loving and protective arms of the nanny state...

NY TIMES EDITORIAL The Uninsured Published: August 22, 2009 One of the major goals of health care reform is to cover the vast numbers of uninsured. But how vast, really, is that pool of people? Who are they? And how important is it to cover all or most of them? Critics play down the seriousness of the problem by pointing out that the ranks of the uninsured include many people who have chosen to forgo coverage or are only temporarily uninsured: workers who could afford to pay but decline their employers’ coverage; the self-employed who choose not to pay for...

President Obama for a third time has misstated the number of Americans who lack health insurance, this time doing it in an op-ed piece published Saturday by the New York Times. “I don’t have to explain to the nearly 46 million Americans who don’t have health insurance how important this is,” Obama said in the op-ed about his efforts to reform the American health care industry. In a July 22 primetime press conference, Obama falsely said there were “47 million Americans who have no health insurance.” At an August 11 town hall meeting in Portsmouth, N.H., he falsely said “nearly...

Rep. Mike Ross (D-Ark.) said on Wednesday that providing healthcare to uninsured Americans is "not what this healthcare reform debate is about."In making his comments, Ross, who is the centrist Blue Dogs' health reform point man, questioned one of the primary healthcare goals of the White House and Democratic leaders. "That is a side benefit to healthcare reform and an important one," Ross told the Arkansas Educational Television Network. Instead, the fifth-term congressman said the bill should focus on "cost containment."The Energy and Commerce Committee member reiterated that he wants to pass a health reform bill by the end of...

Keith Hennessey has analyzed 20 statements made by President Obama during the town hall meeting on health care at Portsmouth, New Hampshire. You can read Hennessey's analysis at his home page. One of the statements Hennessey examines pertains to what, for Obama and many others, is the starting point in the debate - the number of people who are uninsured. In Portsmouth, Obama had this to say: I don't have to explain to you that nearly 46 million Americans don't have health insurance coverage today. In the wealthiest nation on Earth, 46 million of our fellow citizens have no coverage....

Health Care: The administration uses the "46 million uninsured" as a reason to nationalize health care. But the Census Bureau says about a fifth of those aren't U.S. citizens. In fact, a goodly number are illegal aliens.At a town hall meeting in Green Bay, Wis., last week, President Obama spoke of the need to cover the "46 million people who don't have health insurance." At another point he simply referred to the "46 million uninsured." At neither point did he refer to them as "Americans." That was wise, because not all them are, the Census Bureau says.According to "Income, Poverty,...

The version of Obamacare offered by the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee has a number of controversial provisions. Conspicuous among them is a proposed fine of as much as $1,000 a year on individuals who refuse to purchase health-insurance coverage as the bill mandates. The antecedent of the individual mandate is the Massachusetts health-care reform of 2006. That measure — spearheaded by Republican then-governor Mitt Romney, and lauded by Ted Kennedy, who is now the chairman of the HELP Committee — contained a universal individual mandate to purchase state-approved insurance coverage. Or else what? Romney had proposed...

In a town hall meeting in Portsmouth, N.H., yesterday aimed at “setting the record straight” on health care reform, President Obama again falsely stated the number of uninsured Americans, this time saying it was 46 million, down a million from the 47 million uninsured Americans he falsely said there were in a primetime press conference less than a month ago. The president's claim yesterday that there are 46 million uninsured Americans overshoots the Census Bureau’s official estimate by about 10 million people—a mistake that is more than 7 times larger than the 1,315,809 people that the Census Bureau estimates make...

"Obamacare" was launched in the wake of a long, persistent Greek Chorus of claims that 46 million Americans lacked health insurance, had to have it and only the federal government could "reform" the system to make it possible. The number of uninsured was climbing steadily, said Dr. Obama. The new president's revival meetings (aka "town halls") often featured examples of the inequities of the present system: a cancer victim denied coverage, someone who couldn't afford a hip replacement, and so forth. Dr. Obama's prescriptions were repeated over and over: His plan would reduce the nation's health care bill; a "public...