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.
The way FNC and was talking it sounded like it might be that, but I am pretty sure the SCOTUS just renamed the mandate a tax, which would make the above just empty words because it keeps it intact without changes.
After all that was the Obama legal argument and not a bad one if you consider how targeted tax credits work.
The tax is the way the mandate will be funded. It means that if it stays, it will be the biggest tax hike in US history.
” 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...”
I have a very bad feeling that Roberts family was threatened......a VERY bad feeling.
You are assuming that justices take a law and the constitution and make decisions in a vacuum. They don't. They also consider prior legal precedents and Roberts said many times in his confirmation hearings that he would do that. Scalia and Thomas do much less of that and have more inspiring rulings that throw out those FDR precedents.
The legal precedents (since FDR ) that are consistent with this are :
1) targeted tax credits, 2) Medicare
Judges have grown the Constitution (Federal power) greatly since FDR.
Using the power to income tax to reward and punish us has been used for decades, this personal mandate is new only in that it is a reverse tax credit(it has no penalty for not paying it) , and a weak one too,
I can walk through an example, I had some insulation added to my house and got a tax deduction for doing that. So I paid less taxes for buying something that the government wanted-me to do. Do I like this?? NO! But it's the country we live in.
Regardless of that, the reason why I think Romney and Boehner wanted the whole bill upheld is that they were scared, if it looked like a Republican victory, that voters would be directed to them to propose/pass an alternative at least for the freebee stuff. They dont want that.
Obama’ appearing to score a big victory could play either way, Americans love a winner, but as health care costs go up he will continue to get the blame.
—I have a very bad feeling that Roberts family was threatened......a VERY bad feeling.—
I have almost no doubt.
I am, more and more, considering this to be our Reichtag fire. Reasonable people are shocked by this decision, even if they are for Obamacare.
We are like a family with little income and facing foreclosure and dad just got the loan for a new motorhome. Enjoy that first tank of gas.
They wrote that, but look at how easily Obama found an excuse to "nullify" the SCOTUS rule that states could determine the immigration status of people, by just refusing to work with AZ.
Note also that Obama also makes political decisions about which states get disaster aid (he knew he was going to lose Texas in 2012, so id disaster aid is another political slush fund, better to spend it on states he has a chance to win).
—Note also that Obama also makes political decisions about which states get disaster aid (he knew he was going to lose Texas in 2012, so id disaster aid is another political slush fund, better to spend it on states he has a chance to win).—
That is just politics as played on the national, and state levels. Has been for a long, long time. I don’t like it, but it’s how the system works.
You were not forced to add insulation to your home.
That’s true.
You mean like I am forced to buy medicare with those payroll taxes even if I dont want it? No one on FNC expects medicare to be overturned. Hell, half their viewers are on medicare.
That particular personal mandate that was challenged doesnt ‘force’ us to buy insurance if we want to be uninsured. If it did there would be zero uninsured on day 1.
Instead the law does nothing to those who still don't buy insurance, except maybe deduct a few hundred from your tax refund check assuming you were even due one. And then when you get sick you just sign up for an insuance policy and get those expensive cancer treatments at others expense.
If Obama-care really does jack premiums up then you will see many Americans proving that no one 'forced' them to buy insurance by remaining uninsured. 'forced' was just hype.
There are other mandates in the bill, some were overturned.
Alternatively if you don't ‘buy’ medicare coverage with those payroll taxes you go to jail. Heck, remember the SS argument :”I paid in” ???
But if you dont buy health insurance and you still dont pay the ‘fine’ they dont do anything to you, nothing, and you can still get insurance later after you get sick.
Check LOL
No, you’re right. It doesn’t force you. You will just be fined about 2.5% of your income if you don’t.
Income $ 50k: $ 500.00
Income $100k: $1000.00
Income $250k: $2500.00
Income $1m: $10000.00
If you make $1 million or more a year, you’re essentially self-insured, not a burden on the system. None the less, you’ll be making big payments into the system or else.
Have other POTUSes used disaster aid as a political slush fund?
I never heard that fixed 2.5% number. I thought it was ~ $800 per individual. You wont get health insurance for that.
But there is NO ‘fine’ for not paying the ‘fine’. You ever hear of a fine like that? Try not paying a parking ticket. They will jack up a $50 ticket to 1K eventually, then take your car.
That doesn't shock me. I had a similar but less cynical thought, maybe they'd want it upheld not cause they were "scared" but because they'd find it advantageous to still have the issue to run on in November. But I doubt if Roberts was thinking about the election.
Sickoflibs: it looks like Roberts found his horse’s head in his bed.
stephenjohnbanker: I have a very bad feeling that Roberts family was threatened......a VERY bad feeling.
I don't buy it for a second. Maybe he was bribed but he's probably just a FRIGGIN idiot.
—Have other POTUSes used disaster aid as a political slush fund?—
Dunno. I’m talking about the concept in general. It is how politics works.
” stephenjohnbanker: I have a very bad feeling that Roberts family was threatened......a VERY bad feeling.
I don’t buy it for a second. Maybe he was bribed but he’s probably just a FRIGGIN idiot. “
Roberts is a very intelligent man. How could he, all of a sudden, be this stupid?
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