Posted on 03/31/2012 6:12:20 AM PDT by Oldeconomybuyer
Nobody knows what the Supreme Court will decide with regard to the Affordable Care Act. But, after this week's hearings, it seems quite possible that the court will strike down the "mandate" – the requirement that individuals purchase health insurance – and maybe the whole law.
Let's start with the already famous exchange in which Justice Antonin Scalia compared the purchase of health insurance to the purchase of broccoli, with the implication that if the government can compel you to do the former, it can also compel you to do the latter. That comparison horrified health care experts all across America because health insurance is nothing like broccoli.
Why? When people choose not to buy broccoli, they don't make broccoli unavailable to those who want it. But when people don't buy health insurance until they get sick – which is what happens in the absence of a mandate – the resulting worsening of the risk pool makes insurance more expensive, and often unaffordable, for those who remain. As a result, unregulated health insurance basically doesn't work, and never has.
As I said, we don't know how this will go. But it's hard not to feel a sense of foreboding – and to worry that the nation's already badly damaged faith in the Supreme Court's ability to stand above politics is about to take another severe hit.
(Excerpt) Read more at sacbee.com ...
The "politics" of Obamacare is that no Republican voted for it. Krugman and other Statists demand that SCOTUS "stand above politics" now, but were cheering when Pelosi-Reid-Obama crammed this down America's throat.
C'mon, Paul, you hack. Did you even bother to talk to one?
“But it’s hard not to feel a sense of foreboding – and to worry that the nation’s already badly damaged faith in the Supreme Court’s ability to stand above politics is about to take another severe hit.”
Standing above politics, in Krugman’s pea brain, means also standing above the Constitution.
Liberal judges actually coaching the stumbling and bumbling Obamacare lawyer = Just fine.
Conservative judges using analogies and hypotheticals = a travesty of justice.
Liberal Hypocrisy.
Viewpoints: For starters, Justice Scalia, broccoli isn’t health insurance
Generally when I read lamea$$ ignorant arguments like this, I suggest that the idiot forwarding them is purposely missing the point he or she is contending with; however, given the complete sociopathic and intellectual incapacity of this Krugman creature, it is best to simply ignore it and write it off as the pointless ranting of a self-aggrandizing socialist a$$ clown.
You are right. Health insurance isn’t broccoli...AND THAT WAS HIS ENTIRE POINT.
Sheez. The idea is that if the government can force you to buy aone product because you need ot for your health and for regulatory purposes, then they can force you to buy other products for the same reasons.
Broccoli is “good for you” if the new “Health Care mafia” decided brocoli was “good for you” and needed to be regulated, they could force you to buy ot for those purposes too...or any other item that could possibly be fit into those broad categories.
Comversly, if they can force you to buy something for these reasons, they would also inherit the power to ban products for the same reason and tell you what NOT to buy.
Total government...read totalitarian government...at its finest.
AMERICA AT THE CROSSROADS OF HISTORY
http://www.jeffhead.com/crossroads.htm
THE MAN WHO DESPISES AMERICA
http://www.jeffhead.com/obama-time.htm
if horseysh!t can be described as "pure", this would qualify.
one wonders how the human race survived for the millennia preceding Barack Hussein Obamas complete forgettable, regrettable existence.
shoulda stayed in Kenya, bwana.
And health insurance isn't health care.
And a rat isn't a pig isn't a dog isn't a boy.
And the Constitution doesn't live, or breathe.
And we all aren't Trayvon Martin.
His chief medical informant is his proctologist ~ checks in with him every week to see if there's some new treatment they can use to extract his head!
Exactly! Which is why we must force young, healthy people to buy insurance they won't use.
So now that they're paying into Social Security that they'll never collect and health insurance they don't want and won't use, maybe they'll get a clue and vote against Obama this time?
What an idiotic statement. The supply of broccoli is just as unlimited as the supply of insurance policies. The purchase of a broccoli spear does not make broccoli "unavailable" to any subsequent broccoli seeker.
But when people don't buy health insurance until they get sick – which is what happens in the absence of a mandate...
Actually the people who don't buy health insurance, and get sick, generally speaking don't buy health insurance even after they get sick, certainly not because they got sick-this is because health CARE, which they receive, is not health INSURANCE.
The analogy fails because lefties cannot grasp that health care is not health insurance.
The saddest thing about this article is that Paul Krugman actually thinks that his opinion still matters anywhere.
Supreme Court Justices: Are Justices, Senators, and Representatives required to sign-up for ObamaCare, or do they get special treatment and so they are exempt?
My thoughts:
I believe that ObamaCare is one big mess.
Still, I wish we could do something so that we average people can be covered by some type of health insurance that was affordable and inexpensive.
For instance, average income people could purchase $10,000 to $20,000 coverage, and then the government would kick in with catastrophic coverage once the medical bills were more than $20,000.
$20,000 coverage would take care of routine visits to the doctor and a few emergency room visits per year.
Serious tests and sicknesses---like cancer and heart problems---would be covered by government catastrophic insurance.
People with no income, such as homeless people: We should try to come up with a special program where they can get basic care until they can get back on their feet and pay for some of the coverage.
We have got to do something to help the less fortunate to get health coverage, but sad to say, ObamaCare is not the answer, because its 2,000 plus pages are nothing but pages of confusion after confusion.
The point is simple, if Health Insurance becomes a required purchase because Constitutional precepts allow for it, then wouldn't the same logic hold up in any other case for ANYTHING the gov't mandated the public buy?
This would mean the gov't has complete control over our lives when the Constitution was written to ensure the PEOPLE had complete control over the gov't!
The whole point Scalia was making is Broccoli is healthy, therefore would the gov't then have a Constitutional basis to force people to buy it and eat it because it would prevent certain diseases?
A straw man is a component of an argument and is an informal fallacy based on misrepresentation of an opponent's position.[1] To "attack a straw man" is to create the illusion of having refuted a proposition by replacing it with a superficially similar yet unequivalent proposition (the "straw man"), and refuting it, without ever having actually refuted the original position.[1][2]
Another a$$hat that doesn’t know that unlimited power leads to unlimited abuse. If the Commerce Clause has no limits, the government can indeed force you to eat brocolli, buy a Chevy Volt, dictate how much alcohol you can drink, what size house you can buy, etc.
I really don’t care what they decide, I REFUSE to obey. I will not fund abortions.
For starters, Krugman, that doesn't make a damn bit of difference. The government can't force a citizen to enter a marketplace to purchase a produce he or she does not want. Period.
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