Implementing Obamacare: A New Exercise in Old-Fashioned Central Planning

Heritage Foundation ^ | Sept. 10, 2010 | John S. Hoff

[SmartInsight]

Obamacare - the massive health care law passed in March - constitutes the largest expansion of government since the Great Society. Americans have voiced their strong opposition, but the Obama Administration is determined to force-feed the new medicine.

The Administration's vision of health care is based on the premise that the federal government can - and must - control the details of health care financing and delivery across the country. The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) is the scaffolding for this control.

The new law gives the Administration extensive authority to achieve broadly outlined goals, allowing it to control every aspect of health care finance and delivery and to impose its view of how the health care system should operate. The Admin­istration will issue volumes of complex regulations. Health care is being bureaucratized and politicized.

The structure of the health care system will be determined by one central authority, reducing flexibility and denying Americans the ability to make their own choices. Americans will have to obtain health insurance and health care based on what the federal government deems best for them.

[SmartInsight]

This is an excellent, informative discussion of Obamacare by the Heritage Foundation, great reference material.

Recommend reading, bookmarking it, and distributing it, to educate people about reality.

[SmartInsight]

Related:

Obama: We knew health costs would go up

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2587591/posts

[BobP]

The Obama administration's reckless restructuring of the economy has greatly increased the level of uncertainty for anyone thinking about investing, starting a new enterprise, or making consumption expenditures.

This is all by design. The design of an administration that is firmly ensconced in the socialist doctrine of Marx, Lenin, Stalin and Alinsky. Any hand wringing by the regime is just window dressing. The goal is state ownership of everything and everybody.

Big government types like big government. They hate the private sector and the free market. But most of all they despise this country. Remember former auto czar, Bloom: 'The free market is a joke.'

And so, we're in deep, deep economic trouble. And these liberals are going to friggin' sing and dance along, all the way, as they dance off a cliff.

WAKE UP AMERICA!

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[SmartInsight]

Excellent!

[DB]

Well explained here:

http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2010/0927/politics-socialism-capitalism-private-enterprises-obama-business-problem_print.html

[eclecticEel]

Mark.

[Frantzie]

ObamaCare is the first jizya or muslim tax on non-muslims in America. This is common in Muslim countries.

[Cobra64]

.

[MtnClimber]

I predict the central planners, bottom to top, will be the ones swinging from bridges, beheaded. In Mexico it is the innocent, here it will be the evil. Watch!

[Lurker]

I predict the central planners, bottom to top, will be the ones swinging from bridges, beheaded.

From your keyboard to the streets.....

[MtnClimber]

Yes, the same theories that inspired Marxism and all the citizens killed, Sharia and all killed under muslim control and expansionism. It is clear to anyone who loves the theory of individual liberty and freedom that we have to resist these influences in our country. If we used the theories of Dear Leader Zer0 we would tax them 2,000%. But, no it is us taxed and the terrorist “rights” supported. It makes me sick.

[nathanbedford]

The heritage foundation has done a splendid job of exposing the preposterous nature of the healthcare legislation from a federalism point of view. In other words, the article speaks of the engrossedment of federal power but there is another perspective and it raises an equally important constitutional objection.

The Constitution flatly vests the legislative power in one branch of the federal government the Congress:

Article I

Section 1. All legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and House of Representatives.

The Heritage Foundation clearly describes the first hand off of power, constitutionally vested in the states, being usurped by the federal government. But the Constitution also requires that legislative power which is properly to be exercised by the federal government be exercised by the legislative branch. So we have the second hand off, the sole constitutional power to legislate has been handed off from the legislative branch to the executive branch.

There is a long and tedious body of Supreme Court cases remorselessly condoning the abdication of legislative responsibility by the Congress through granting rulemaking power and regulatory power to the executive. One can understand that the Congress is hardly the place to decide on the size of a valve needed to prevent explosions on a deep water oil drilling rig. We conservatives quite properly complained when Congress regulated the size or toilet valves. Equally, the Congress itself can hardly make the inspections necessary to see that the regulations are complied with. But the regulations that have been outlined by the Heritage Foundation are hardly of that nature. They are regulations that make policy. They clearly make law and that is a legislative function.

The Obama administration has resorted to many schemes to get around the Constitution. Since before the election many of us predicted on these threads that he would use the treaty making power of the executive, and even the power to make executive agreements, as a way to get around the Constitution and circumvent not just Congress but the Bill of Rights itself. He has done so on many occasions. Recently, he submitted the United States and the state of Arizona to the oversight of the United Nations on human rights.

It is therefore not surprising that the Obama administration has also resorted to an unprecedented expansion of the rulemaking power of the executive to circumvent the Constitution further. No one can read this article and believe that the executive branch of the United States government is not making law. No one can believe the constitutional mandate that "all legislative powers shall be vested in a Congress" has not been subverted.

By the way, the Constitution vests the power of the judiciary in the third branch of government. How much of our rights to have matters determined by a constitutional Article 3 court have been subverted by this legislation investing the power to adjudicate in the bureaucrats?

[Jacquerie]

“Good intentions will always be pleaded for any assumption of power. The Constitution was made to guard the people against the dangers of good intentions. There are men in all ages who mean to govern well, but they mean to govern. They promise to be good masters, but they mean to be masters.” – Daniel Webster

[MontaniSemperLiberi]

Thank you, thank you.

And just to add, the phrase “the Secretary Shall” appears over 3000 times in the bill. Pelosi was correct, we really did need to pass the bill to find out what is in it because “it” is not in there until “The Secretary Shall” determines what it is!

That was a deliberate act by the Senate. They knew every time the bill got too detailed, where they could not determine the unintended consequences, they could just stick in a “The Secretary Shall”.

Socialism is only plausible if a single unitary executive is able to tweak the rules as unintended consequences come up.

The solution is to require congress approve whatever rules and regulations the executive branch proposes. If they have to delay and get popular approval it becomes obvious that this kind of law doesn’t work.

[nathanbedford]

The innate capacity of our species to rationalize its desires as objective good is virtually infinite. One need only reflect on the biography of Adolf Hitler to confirm that understanding.

Afterwards, after the wreckage and the carnage, a few, a very few can contemplate their deeds retrospectively and conclude that they went, "a Bridge too far."

This capacity for self justification is not limited to leftists but it is leftists who seek the power to effect their predilections. Nevertheless, we conservatives must rigorously guard against this very human tendency. That is why, for example, the practices of zotting is ultimately very dangerous.

[Adder]

The tip of this spear is your EHR or EMR or PHI: all of which are about the same thing: your electronic medical records as passed in the porculous bill.

Your primary physician is the one who is being forced to create these for you...or lose his medicare/medicaid payments.

I am currently fighting mine over it.
‘
That's what they have done: hired your Dr. to be their agent and create an adversary relationship between him and you.

Brilliant, in a Machiavellian way. But disgusting in practice. I can only suggest you fight to refuse them any information. A lot they already have such as your ss, and all the other info you gave them. We are so screwed if we do not get this repealed or overturned.

[Jim Noble]

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) is the scaffolding for this control.

"Scaffolding" is an excellent way to describe this, and many other "laws" passed by Congress since 1964.

Congress passes a "law" which expresses some great, unachievable goal. They then delegate their legislative power (you know, their Article I SOLE legislative power) to the Executive Branch, which makes "rules" (these "rules" are the actual laws, but, unlike real laws, you are guilty until proven innocent and have no right to counsel).

The Congressthings can then run against the "bureaucrats" whose rules "go too far", thereby escaping responsibility for what they have done in the first place.

When the death panels are fully operational, there will be 400 Members of Congress and 75 Senators clamoring to "hold hearings", to "expose", to "fight for you".

But, somehow, there never will be enough to override a veto of the repeal of the PPACA.

Because, you see, the writers of the PPACA were also "fighting for you". They had "good intentions". They were "dealing with real problems".

And so it goes.

We must elect a Congress which can, and will, abolish at least one Executive Branch "rulemaking" body. These unelected legislatures are stealing our power to make laws, which we delegated SOLELY to Congress in 1788, and they are, in the manner of all officers sent hither to harass us and eat out our substance, strangling our liberty.

[Jim Noble]

I didn’t read your excellent post before my #17, which makes the same point less eloquently.

[nathanbedford]

I take your eloquently expressed point.

We have already seen the phenomenon you describe in spades in our income tax laws which provides a "scaffolding" for endless regulations and amendments which in turn give our legislators standing to demand campaign contributions to fix the mess, and votes to do the same.

It is inconceivable that our Congress would ever support a constitutional amendment to substitute a flat tax for the income tax which is, after all, their meal ticket.

[GailA]

How ObamaCare Guts Medicare
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703649004575437311393854940.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEFTTopOpinion

We are no longer talking the original $523 Billion in Medicare cuts, BUT TRILLIONS in GUTTING Medicare for our vulnerable seniors.