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.
Exactly, it's unpopular and Boehner promises to repeal it again and again each election (groundhog day) and never gets it repealed, so he is never held responsible for anything bad. And Dems get the blame for health care getting more expensive.
It's like Obama taxing the rich, he runs on it every election but always manages to be foiled by the other side so he can claim he actually never raised taxes, and yet he had a plan to fix the deficit, by raising taxes.
Have your cake and eat it too. This is called playing the base/suckers.
” 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.”
Man, the 25 million illegals are gonna love this.
I meant just for this election. I'll wait till it's actually possible to repeal it and they don't before I'll go THAT far in accusing them.
This is the completely incorrect bases of your arguments. You are absolutely wrong on this. The law specifically forbids the IRS from taking any punitive action against you for not paying the ‘fine’. This was in the Senate version which made it into law. Republicans rarely talk about this aspect because it nukes the drama aspect of the argument.
The House version had real penalties for not paying the fines but that bill got thrown away.
Dont buy medicare with the payroll taxes and you go to jail.
Here’s a though...Consider the possibility that yes, Roberts is VERY smart, and just attached Obama’s name and face to the largest, most intrusive TAX increase in US history, four months before an election, thereby giving the GOP a clear-cut campaign message to hammer home over and over.
Not to mention the fact that FuBO is all over the place before the ACA passed claiming it WASN’T a tax increase, nor was it a tax hike, nor was it intrusive, etc.
Just posing a thought here...for the record, my immediate reaction was words that are unprintable here and a healthy wrapping of duct tape around my head.
But upon some clear thinking...there could be something more to this. Roberts may just have shoved it up FuBO’s derriere ensuring a GOP win in November.
Don’t know. Trying to see something positive
No idea but people are stupid animals who degrade themselves all the time. Hillary Clinton used to be a Goldwater girl. John Anderson, the Congressman from 1980 who ran to Carter's left started his House career as a staunch conservative. It's the simplest explanation, more believable to me than the CJ of the United States being coerced.
Or maybe we didn't know Johnny Boy as well as we thought. I remember several people saying he could have a moderate streak. One "scholar" I heard insisted he was sure Roberts would never vote to overturn Roe V. Wade.
These taxes are never in the possession of the individual again once they are withheld by their payroll department.
If the IRS cannot levy that fine, then it is good to know and I appreciate the mention. This may be a mute point, in that the vast majority of people who work, generally try to avoid having to come up with money at the end of the tax year.
That certainly leaves a lot of people who do not work at all, but then they may already be covered under Medicaid.
Correct.
I think Republicans got off on the mandate because it is so unpopular (as are taxes) and they thought it had the best shot at being overturned, so today court said they cant force you to do something but they can tax you for not doing it.
Given the focus of the mandate as the boogyman Republicans lost sight of the fact that it's the popular handout mandates that kill off the private insurance industry
, and the personal mandate is so weak it doesn't stop it.
” Here’s a though...Consider the possibility that yes, Roberts is VERY smart, and just attached Obama’s name and face to the largest, most intrusive TAX increase in US history, four months before an election, thereby giving the GOP a clear-cut campaign message to hammer home over and over.”
The press won’t cover it. If they cover anything, they will make Obama a HERO for Obamacare. The only reason Americans know anything about Fast & Furious, is the internet. The press is CLOSED to anything negative about Obama. The MSM has become an enemy of the United States.
I did the Obama-care pings and followed this bill ever step of the way. The Senate weakened the PERSONAL mandate so it is near useless. But that is not good either.
None of this redeems Obama-care from being a terrible destructive bill.
See #49
“...The press won’t cover it....”
True.
But this site is covering it. So is Drudge. So is Newsmax, and Hotair, and Weasel Zippers, and Frontpage, and a slew of other sites all over the Internet and radio.
And you and I are covering it, and everybody we speak to, five, ten, fifteen, twenty folks who cover it with others. We’re legion, whether we see it or not.
This fight isn’t over, brother. One more battle in a longer war and the battle isn’t always to the strongest, nor the race to the swiftest.
Things happen for a reason; on the face of it, we got knocked down today; but that’s just TODAY. We’re down, not out.
F*** ‘em. Regroup.
I agree.
Also: Sorry I linked that post to 48 instead of 49. It was not and intentional misdirection.
Say Obama raised every-ones taxes by $800. But then he in the same bill it offered/passed a tax credit for those that have approved insurance, and that tax credit was the same $800, like the tax credit I got for insulation. So if you don't buy the proper insurance then you have to pay an additional $800 you didn't before the law, just like now except with real penalties. Constitutional? You see the problem?
This bill was designed to get employers to drop coverage and pay the small fine to kill off the employer insurance. The weak mandate was a side issue blown out of proportion.
” The AHA was designed to destroy the ability for business to continue providing insurance coverage. The idea from the start was to get 100% of the populace off private insurance, and onto Obamacare.
That’s what is taking place by design.”
Exactly.
” Things happen for a reason; on the face of it, we got knocked down today; but that’s just TODAY. We’re down, not out.
F*** ‘em. Regroup.”
CW2
bttt
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