Posted on 06/28/2012 4:15:48 AM PDT by radioone
Tomorrow, the Supreme Court is expected to hand down its ruling on Obamacare--and, in particular, the individual mandate, which requires individuals to purchase health insurance whether they want it or not. Obama salutes
Let us hope that the Court invalidates this law.
The individual mandate is the apotheosis of the modern Democratic party’s way of doing business. In particular, it is the quintessential example of how, hiding behind a smokescreen of egalitarian rhetoric, the party has become deeply, perhaps hopelessly, anti-republican, happy to dole out favors to privileged groups while the rest of the country is left with nothing.
First, the individual mandate represents an enormous transfer of wealth, completely independent of income or social status. It transfers resources from the healthy to the sick, from the young to the old, without regard to who has more money to begin with. Democrats typically rail against supposedly regressive GOP tax proposals, but nothing the Republicans have ever cooked up compares to the individual mandate. While we’re on the subject of Democratic regressiveness, LBJ’s Medicare is a similarly regressive form of taxation, and ditto Social Security, ever since Johnson turned it into a pay-as-you-go system. Yet watch Democrats howl with outrage whenever the GOP dares suggest reforms that would alter this socially unjust status quo.
Second, the mandate itself is the method by which the Democrats have delivered literally billions of dollars worth of patronage to the key interests groups that lined up with them during the health care debate. The party sought to apply new layers of regulations upon doctors, nurses, hospitals, retirement care facilities, etc., and they rightfully feared a rebuke from these key “stakeholders,” as the Obama White House called them. What better way to buy their silence than to require 30 million Americans become their customers, whether they want to or not! All it took was a flip-flop on the part of the president – who conveniently disavowed his campaign opposition to a mandate – and suddenly all those opponents turned in to lusty supporters, eager to get their hands on all that new revenue.
But what about the “public option”? The inclusion of a public option would have mitigated the perniciousness of the mandate – for then, at least, the government would not be requiring individuals to contract with private, for-profit entities as a condition of their citizenship. Liberal Democrats, naturally, blamed Republican perfidy for the death of the public option – but it never stood a real chance, anyway. The White House hinted early in the health care process that there were many ways to get to universal coverage, and never once suggested that the exclusion of a public option would be a deal-breaker. And that was because none of those stakeholders whom the mandate bought off wanted to compete with the government! And what would be the point of buying them off with a mandate while including a public option? So, in reality, the “will they or won’t they” drama over the public option in the fall of 2009 was mere kabuki theater: the insurers, the drug makers, the doctors, hospitals, nurses, and so on would go ballistic. It was never going to make the final cut.
Let’s put all this in historical context. The Democratic party is the oldest existing political party in the entire world, and it was founded as a people’s party. Andrew Jackson’s veto message of a bill to recharter the Bank of the United States stands to this day as a kind of mission statement for the modern party, and it is worth quoting at length (emphasis mine):
It is to be regretted that the rich and powerful too often bend the acts of government to their selfish purposes. Distinctions in society will always exist under every just government. Equality of talents, of education, or of wealth can not be produced by human institutions. In the full enjoyment of the gifts of Heaven and the fruits of superior industry, economy, and virtue, every man is equally entitled to protection by law; but when the laws undertake to add to these natural and just advantages artificial distinctions, to grant titles, gratuities, and exclusive privileges, to make the rich richer and the potent more powerful, the humble members of society--the farmers, mechanics, and laborers--who have neither the time nor the means of securing like favors to themselves, have a right to complain of the injustice of their Government. There are no necessary evils in government. Its evils exist only in its abuses. If it would confine itself to equal protection, and, as Heaven does its rains, shower its favors alike on the high and the low, the rich and the poor, it would be an unqualified blessing.
The individual mandate is an overwhelmingly unpopular item that requires a patently unjust transfer of wealth for the purpose of paying off the interest groups that have the biggest financial stake in health care. Considered next to Jackson’s veto message: It is a signal that the Democratic party has become the opposite of what its founders intended to be. The individual mandate is a testimony to the broken nature of the modern party. It is a symbol that, despite their egalitarian rhetoric, contemporary Democrats are ready, willing, and able to bend the policy needle toward the interests of “the rich… and the potent,” at the expense of the “farmers, mechanics, and laborers.”
Let us hope that the Supreme Court has the good sense to do away with this awful innovation.
Despite what liberals may say, the individual mandate represents a qualitative expansion in the powers of the federal government, the likes of which we have not seen since the 1930s. We can be confident that the Democratic party as it is currently constituted lacks the ability to use this new power in a socially responsible way.
If the Court allows Washington to mandate commerce in order to regulate it, this will open new, terrible avenues for the Democrats to pay off their client groups, at the expense of the public good. Today it is a mandate to buy a policy from Aetna; but who knows what tomorrow may bring? Clever Democrats could surely find some “compelling” reason for private parties to contract with the SEIU, AFSCME, the UAW, the Sierra Club, NOW, or any of the wide assortment of narrow interests that depend on the Democratic party for their patronage.
Today? Oh dear, I’m nervous.
Me too.
Do you support the federal requirement that insurance companies charge you as a part of your insurance premium for the following costs incurred by other policy holders: in vitro fertilization, dependent children 22-26 on parents policies, and sex change surgery?
What’s wrong with Democrats is that they are utterly immoral. Them and this monstrosity law which hopefully will be killed today.
If it is struck down, you will hear the uproar, and the wailing and knashing of teeth, as they realize they won’t be allowed to rob, steal and redistribute. Just ignore it.
You bet. They have no qualms about destroying the lives of millions of future Americans in exchange for their own personal present gain. "Evil" is the only word which fits.
ROBERTS the traitor? Kennedy a good egg now? ROBERTS? Sonofabitch!!
ROBERTS the traitor? Kennedy a good egg now? ROBERTS? Sonofabitch!!
I watch the Dems and they been repeatly warning Roberts to not side with Scalia, Thomas and Alito and it looks like Roberts found his horse’s head in his bed.
—I watch the Dems and they been repeatly warning Roberts to not side with Scalia, Thomas and Alito and it looks like Roberts found his horse’s head in his bed.—
I honestly believe that is what happened here.
I am still shocked, though.
Long ago I read Borks book ‘The Tempting of America’ on court decisions and he explained how if you side with the progressive justices you get heaps of media praise and party invitations, otherwise you get scorn and ridicule.
MSNBC, Obama, congression Dems, etc have been on TV DAILY specifically warning Roberts not to side with the conservative three, especially if it will lead to 5 to 4 decisions.
There are decades of New Deal precedents since FDR that are somewhat consistent with this watered down ‘tax/fine’ ‘mandate’ approach, so I didnt have my hopes up regardless of Republican hype.
Let me shock you, I bet Romney and Boehner secretly wanted the whole bill upheld for purely political reasons. They were scared it would be overturned and the spotlight might point at them.
All the predictions here in comments that the whole bill would be thrown out was massive wishful thinking, it was always down to a single justice, and I swore off wishful thinking in GWB second term.
Prior to this morning I had actually thought the law, specifically the individual mandate would be struck down.
This morning I woke up thinking there was a good chance I might be surprised at the ruling.
With the report the individual mandate had been ruled unconstitutional, I thought we had a victory. I never imagined Roberts would ‘create a tax’ against what Congress had as a single voice claimed they were not doing.
Roberts had every opportunity to study and understand Congress’ intentions here. There was plenty of public evidence that Congress had forcefully denied they were creating a tax.
Roberts should have held them to that. It seems to me that if you are a believer in original intent for some things, you should be in favor of it for other things. Evidently Roberts is quite selective in his belief in ‘Original Intent’.
I confess that there is the possibility that this will actually hurt obama in the election, but time will tell. It is like a complicated chess game and the results of single moves are not always immediately apparent.
Though this is a bit like sacrificing your queen.
There are two reasons I see to have thought this:
1) Wishful thinking, and I got pinged with lots of it here for sure
2) Media/Republicans hype over the justices critical questions on the mandate. This was coming on real strong.
So the 'conventional wisdom' was that the mandate would go. The 'wishful thinking wisdom' was that the whole bill would go.
The unpopular personal ‘mandate/fine/tax’ in the bill was so watered down it was a joke, and the theory was it would bring the whole bill down. The Federal government has been using the tax code to control us for decades, and if you dont pay your income tax you can go to jail or have property seized, unlike this joke 'mandate'.
While the Dems are celebrating and Republicans are commiserating all based on hyped ‘expectations’, we should learn exactly what was thrown out of the bill and how it affects it.
—...we should learn exactly what was thrown out of the bill and how it affects it.—
So, what WAS thrown out?
FNC reported that they threw out some of the state mandates that punished states for refusing to expand medicaid to lots more people, which would have bankrupted them. So if this is true, then it is GOOD news.
Evidently the bill had stated that if states wouldn’t expand their Medicaid programs to cover massive numbers of new people, the federal government could/would cut off all Medicaid funding to the state.
The SCOTUS nixed that.
—So if this is true, then it is GOOD news.—
And the quotes below, from this site are also good news:
“The court ruled that the mandate is unconstitutional under the Constitution’s commerce clause, but it can stay as part of Congress’s power under a taxing clause. The court said that the government will be allowed to tax people for not having health insurance. “
“It actually settles nothing. By shifting the debate to the tax arena, and with a four-justice dissent, the decision guarantees only that the broader fight over a suitable national health policy will continue,” said Richard Saltman, a professor at the Rollins School of Public Health, Emory University. “In effect, the court decided this was too hot to handle. The focus will (has already) shift back to the political arena, where a deeply divided electorate will have to decide which policy path they want the country to pursue.”
This is not being reported accurately according to the quotes above. It means they DID strike down the mandate but said that if they want to levy a tax, that’s ok. If true, good luck with that. ;-)
Mandate, Tax, what’s the difference? If it walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, it’s a duck.
Actually SoL, if you think about it, the Commerce Clause validity was struck down. I don’t think it was unreasonable to think that it would be.
Your list of reasons should have included a number 3) It is reasonable to think the individual mandate should fail, because the claim involving the Commerce Clause could not stand SCOTUS scrutiny.
I don’t think very many reasonable people actually saw the Hail Mary “Tax Claim” to be substantive. I am astounded that Roberts bought off on it. Simply amazing...
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.