Posted on 12/04/2012 5:51:13 AM PST by Resettozero
South Carolina Freedom of Health Care Protection Act Declares ‘Obamacare’ Unconstitutional and invalid in South Carolina
A proposed bill sponsored by Rep. William Chumley of Spartanburg County, and designed to block ‘Obamacare’ in South Carolina, will be pre-filed in Columbia before the end of the year.
The South Carolina Freedom of Health Care Protection Act declares the “Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act,” passed by a “lame duck’ Democrat Congress and signed into law by President Obama, to be “unconstitutional,” “invalid” and “shall be considered null and void in this state.”
The description of the act reads as follows:
An Act to render null and void certain unconstitutional laws enacted by the Congress of the United States taking control over the health insurance industry and mandating that individuals purchase health insurance under threat of penalty.
Rep. Chumley discussed the proposed new law at the November meeting of RINO Hunt. During the discussion, it was noted that there are examples of “Nullification” being used by various states going back for more than a century. The most recent are states legalizing marijuana and homosexual marriage prohibited by federal law. Sanctuary Cities for illegal aliens is another example.
Rep. Chumley said he plans to pre-file the bill before the end of the year. He is currently seeking co-sponsors of the bill. The bill is also being introduced in the Senate.
(Excerpt) Read more at timesexaminer.com ...
But why do you need to go so far down hardnose lane?
Honestly? I think I'm a little bitter over recent events. Thank you for your patient attempts to inspire me out of my cynicism. You make some excellent points.
To produce results satisfactory to you, and to aleviate your fear, you suggest that FReepers and other conservatives instead of taking such actions as this, ought to do...what?
I made a concrete suggestion. Twice. Still no responses to that.
I have some other suggestions. Should I bother to type them in?
I'm not quite as pessimistic as you are: Americans are stubborn, we're going to do things her own way, and I don't think the system we have in 25 years will be "socialized"; I can't see a majority of US voters putting up with something nearly as centralized as the English healthcare system, and there are too many practical advantages to systems based on "managed competition".
Also, we really do have a substantial role for the states embedded in our political DNA, and I expect healthcare regulation and provision in the US will likely always have a substantial policy input on the regional if not the state level.
And if I had to make a guess, I would expect that the system as it evolves in the US will most likely become something that has many of the characteristics of the Dutch and German systems with some of the decentralization of the Canadian system:
"Single payer" via federal taxation, substantial policy input and control at the state or regional level, with care provided by five to seven major players, perhaps entirely privately owned, or perhaps a mix of for-profit and NFP providers.
And I'm pretty sure that the program will be both very popular and fairly efficient, and for most citizens it will probably be a more desirable arrangement than the current patch up because of continuity and portability; for example these two factors are one of the major reasons that small business is 2 to 3 times the percentage of GNP in parts of Western Europe than it is here, and why such businesses are more stable (less prone to failure, and especially to high initial attrition rates) than in the US.
Meanwhile, IMO the Republican Party's (not necessarily the same thing as "the conservative movement") decision to walk away from the table instead of fighting for plan characteristics that would likely do a better job of optimizing the system than some of the Democrat alternatives was an unwise gamble: too much downside compared to the likely upsides, and as a result it will be that much harder to rationalize the ACA.
Sure, as long as each demonstrates your sincerity on this thread, which I still call into question, not only because of your screen name but because of your flippancy in dealing with FR posters today.
Well excuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuse ME.
The screen name was supposed to be a Bullwinkle reference -- which nobody ever gets. I would create a new one, but then I get people questioning me for being a recent sign-up. It's a real pickle.
“I can’t see a majority of US voters putting up with something as nearly centralized as the English healthcare system”
Why not? The early steps are the hardest. We got this far with 60%+ opposition. Momentum’s on the other side.
What about all the other nationalized industries? We’ve gone longer now with a central bank than we went without, and that was a damn long time compared to other civilizations. Whatever they don’t outright control now they dominate through regulation and fiscal and monetary policy, or simply haven’t gotten to. Look what they can do to student loans and energy through executive fiat. The so-called Reagan “revolution” barely slowed it down, let alone cut back.
Yeah, I’m pessimistic.
This might not help you but it does work every time for me: My daughter sometimes will say, “Think on the good things Daddy.”
Good point. I am with you on this one.
> but nowhere there can be a successful outcome for me or my progeny
Actually, there may be some substantial up-sides for your progeny in whatever evolves out of the ACA. For example as I’ve noted in this thread and elsewhere the exchanges are going to provide the first real opportunity for many individuals who want to start a business to access to health insurance for their families at anything approaching parity with people employed by organizations large enough to bargain for coverage.
That’s *huge* for people who want to start their own businesses, not only because it makes it easier to start a business, but it makes it far easier to *succeed* in a small business if you encounter significant health problems.
It this regard I was just reading an interesting article in today’s Financial Times about the realization in France that you have to allow repeated attempts by individuals who fail at starting a first business if you want subsequent businesses to succeed.
So French policymakers are wising up to the fact that the experience of failing in one business substantially *increases* your chance of success in the second attempt (compared to someone with business experience), and it’s wise policy to structure affairs such you make repeated attempts easier rather than more difficult!
At the same time in this country we been moving in the opposite direction in some ways.
For example the recent revisions to the bankruptcy laws make it more difficult to discharge credit-card debt is now thought to be substantially retarding new small business foundation, because the way that a lot of people fund the startup of a small business is with the only “business” credit they have available: their personal charge cards.
And while it seems only “fair” to make it more difficult to evade such debt, the flip-side of that is that it makes it far more difficult for the same individuals to start a subsequent business to earn enough income to pay the debts incurred in the previous attempt!
In a sense, makeing it easier to discharge such debt in bankruptcy is a “tax” on everyone else, however it now increasingly appears to be the case that the increased economic activity resulting from making such debts easier to discharge may be a net gain for the economy.
And... guess what. Some Western European countries are starting to think about “reforming” their relatively strict personal bankruptcy laws - the opposite of our own recent changes.
In the same way you can think of the ACA has a sort of “tax” on the insured and employed on behalf of the uninsured and the un-employeind (including those attempting to start a business, or recover from the failure of the previous attempt).
It somewhat reduces my “freedom” to pay such a a tax, but it also increases other peoples’ “freedom” to become self-employed and economically self-sufficient - so the result may be a net gain in the “freedom” experienced by society as a whole.
(The arguments easier to take seriously if you think of it taken to extremes: you can imagine a society where most people live in a state of virtual economic serfdom to a very small minority of kleptocratic elites - and in fact there places in the world where such societies exist.
The people at the top of the heap have almost unlimited personal freedom, and for the most part believe they deserve at.
OTOH, most observers elsewhere regard such societies as highly “unfree”, based on the actual political and economic options of the majority of their citizens.)
If you work backwards from such extremes, you start to realize that as regards “freedom” societies exist on a continuum where if you attempt to assert absolute individual rights as a primary social good you can only do so by reducing the practical “freedom” of someone else - and that many kinds of political and social arrangements (such as bankruptcy laws or access to health care) can operate in counter-intuitive ways to increase or decrease freedom for one group or another - my “freedom” may be reduced by arrangements which supply the necessary preconditions of “freedom” to someone else.
And if on the average the “freedom” increases to my benefit (for example, by living in a more affluent society, which can better afford to fund medical research which increases the productive lifetime of people like myself - as Steve Jobs discovered “All your money can’t another minute buy”) I untimely come out ahead.
Or, for example, should you attempt to start a business without health care for your family, and one of your children experience an illness that would otherwise bankrupted you, I profit from the fact that you can continue to attempt to make your business a success, growing the economy and eventually reducing my tax burden relative to the benefits I receive.
It all seems kind of theoretical, and sort of like rhetorical sleight of hand, but freedom is a complicated thing to understand without thinking about the social conditions in nurture it, so here is one more example to ponder:
In several of the “less-free” societies of Western Europe, small business is a much larger proportion of the economy than here, primarily because of various social policies that make it easier for small businesses to succeed.
The rewards for the most successful entrepreneurs are somewhat lower than here, but there are many more “reasonably successful” small business people (relative to population.
So, is the freedom to profit from individual effort smaller (lower rewards at the very top), or greater (more people are their own bosses - think of them as the modern equivalent of the civilly virtuous yeoman framers beloved of some of the Framers)... or just “different”?
“a more desirable arrangement than the current patch up”
What really gets me is that people forget what a Frankenstein is the current system, and it gets characterized as the free market when opposed to the newer, speaker, more rational system. That always happens. Government screws it up, tgen we need nore government to fix the purported Wild West, laissez faire anarchy.
No, not Frankenstein. That implies deliberation. It is like the pile of Frankenstein pieces before they were sewn together.
“too much downside”
Easy to say now, but think what it took. Not just the summer of yelling old people, but a Republican senator in Ted Kennedy’s seat, reconciliation, deeming it to have passed, the Amazing Flopping Roberts, the taxalty argument out of nowhere, and it’s STILL not over.
Plus, the exchanges, preexisting coverage, and the mandate were at one time “conservative” ideas. Somehow we always come up with the worst ideas. Cap and Trade is ours, as a sensible “free market” alternative to, J don’t know what. Banning fossil fuels altogether? But who’d gi along with that, if we didn’t pave the ground for them.
Your feel for the US voter is accurate insofar as there’s some resistance left. But it’s a gradual thing, as I’ve said. If the president comes on tv and says that’s it, healthcare is an inalienable right. We’re taking over the hospitals. Welcome to the Tennessee Valley Healthcare System. People would revolt.
His it happens, though, is they plan for these exchanges to be set up, to solve problems spawned of each individual state’s individually wacko rubric. And they’re demagogued about the poor uninsured, who are dying in the streets as well as bankrupting us in the ER. Then there’s the tragedy of preexisting conditions, which we can’t see as the child of the idiocy of having our employers cover us. So we destroy forever the concept of insurance by forcing coverage for the cancer you already have, sorta like buying fire insurance for your inflamed house. Alone this would bankrupt the industry, but we like individual responsibility so we throw on the mandate, which forces us to be responsible on threat of paying a fine that might be cheaper than being responsible.
Good as thus sounds, it is wildly unpopular, admittedly for some because it’s not socialist enough. It passes, just barely, and we missed an opportunity standing with our consciences. It could’ve had more of these great conservative ideas, like tort reform. Which knowing us would be ordering everyone to pay lawyer retainer fees for doctors, plus welfare called “illness justice” to cover those left unavenged in malpractice suits amounting somehow to more than we’re paying for court fees and settlements now. We’d find a way.
You know what else benefits the economy as a whole besides forgiving debt? Saving. Remember that? Remember when people actually invested money that gad been earned and set aside? Remember when capital formation used to be based on something other than credit or redistribution, or both at the same time?
But... most places that could have emulated the NHS didn't, and don't want to. France is probably closest, but Germany and the Netherlands (for example) chose "manged competition" by private insurers, and show no interest in further centralization or direct provision.
And the country that has moved in the most "Libertarian" direction in recent years (New Zeeland) opted to provide government insurance for catastrophic expense only.
So something ,like the NHS is *far* from inevitable, even in societies far more receptive to "Big Government" than our own.
In fact, most of these health care systems evolved out of preexisting arrangements and in accordance with "national temperament", and the US system is going to be the same - so IMO it's *far* more likely to look like the Dutch system than the English or even the French.
*sniff*sniff*
U haz a smell.
Your “freedom” is of the positive kind Obama’s so fond of contrasting with the negative freedom of our sordid past. The negative freedoms are actually freedoms, your freedoms something else. Dependence, really. Also a sort of theft.
You have it right to view Obamacare as one giant tax, as in ot will be a big drain on the economy. The result will be ever more poor saps who need to be carried and ever less paying for it, as usual.
Your parenthetical extremity simply makes no sense. It is the fever dream of all debt smashers. But it only works under other economic systems, and then under violence, which makes your elite the government. Doesn’t work in capitalism, unless backed up by the government. Then you’re in the same place, relying on implicit violence.
You strike me as a Gingrich type, as I described him earlier: a “frugal socialist.” You take the welfare state for granted, and seek for ways to grow it better, with a dash of individual responsibility and a pinch of prudence. But grow it does. It’s difficult to tell now or a century ago, even, what is the market and what is interference. You make it all the cloudier, and throw out morality in favor of efficiency as well. Because who cares what’s right or wrong if maybe perserverence in the right could lead to a net loss to the economy.
Who even thinks about pulling back? Going in the other direction ever. No, not for us. We have to think up more insane schemes because the worse guys (we’re the bad guys ; they’re worse) can’t get there first. Let em wait their turn.
“opted to provide government insurance for catastrophic expense only”
That is insane to me, since it is exactly the sort of thing insurance (as an actual purchase) is good for.
“National temperament” is a funny thing. We are only a wobbly toddler socialisticly speaking. Germany may be one way now, but I bet they had nationalized healthcare in the 30s, didn’t they? We never had that, but we’ve been rushing downhill headlong since 08, and I’ve seen ni significant turnaround overall since the New Deal.
Oh. I remember it *very* well.
Would it be unfair to point out that, above the level of very-small business, Capitalism operates by routinely avoiding personal responsibility and readily discharging discharging bad debt?
Both corporate officers and their stockholders are exempt from personal financial responsibility for the debt incurred by a failing business - in this sense the people attempting so start a business at personable financial risk - however virtuous this may be in abstract- are rubes at the county fair.
I say this as someone who (successfully) started his first two business on a self-financed basis at high personal financial risk, and survived the experience both times - before I finally realized I was the rube in the game, and started playing on the same basis as the smart boys.
By the way, when I say inevitable nationalized healthcare, I don’t necessarily mean the NHS. There’s more than one way to skin an economy. We have a central bank, you know, which controls our money supply and effectively runs the banking industry. Do most people even realize? Certainly it wasn’t sold that way, and how many fell for its subtle dodges of fake privateness and dissolution. Listening to the evening news I’d think they were all wildcats on some frontier.
Healthcare will be managed nationally, as is transportation, finance, and energy now, only moreso. It needn’t all be located in one big building marked in recognizable letters.
But perhaps I’m abusing the term “nationalize.” What do you call the desultory public-private monstrosity known as the US economy now? I’d say fascism, if it didn’t have misleading connotations. That’s nationalistic enough.
“Would it be unfair to point out that...Capitalism /operates by routinely avoiding personal responsibility and readily discharging bad debt?”
Yes, because I don’t know what you mean by “Capitalism,” so I would be at a loss as to whether I should argue or nod my head. I’m at that point, truly, where I sometimes have no idea what common words are supposed to mean.
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