Strike one against ObamaCare

The limits of government power are obvious. Anything the liberals want to do is ok under the Constitution, and anything the conservatives want to do is limited and outside the power granted to government. Unless it’s plainly written in the Constitution. Then it’s outside the power of government due to penumbras and auras around words. Unless a liberal favors it, then it can be strictly against the law, but it’s ok, since it’s a living, breathing document. Unfortunately it has to breath in all this carbon dioxide causing global warming.

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Now if we can just impeach him.

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ForLiberty

Wake up from your wet dream.

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I’m sure our “Constitutional Scholar” President is apalled, but this is long overdue. It is probably too much to hope for that the ruling stands and some limits can be applied to this Commerce Clause which has been misinterpreted for years and has had a big part in the growth of the Federal Government. Great day for America!

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No need for impeachment, just vote him out in 2012 and all will be fine…

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Section 8.

The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;

To borrow Money on the credit of the United States;

To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes;

To establish an uniform Rule of Naturalization, and uniform Laws on the subject of Bankruptcies throughout the United States;

To coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin, and fix the Standard of Weights and Measures;

To provide for the Punishment of counterfeiting the Securities and current Coin of the United States;

To establish Post Offices and post Roads;

To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;

To constitute Tribunals inferior to the supreme Court;

To define and punish Piracies and Felonies committed on the high Seas, and Offences against the Law of Nations;

To declare War, grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal, and make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water;

To raise and support Armies, but no Appropriation of Money to that Use shall be for a longer Term than two Years;

To provide and maintain a Navy;

To make Rules for the Government and Regulation of the land and naval Forces;

To provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions;

To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the Militia, and for governing such Part of them as may be employed in the Service of the United States, reserving to the States respectively, the Appointment of the Officers, and the Authority of training the Militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress;

To exercise exclusive Legislation in all Cases whatsoever, over such District (not exceeding ten Miles square) as may, by Cession of Particular States, and the Acceptance of Congress, become the Seat of the Government of the United States, and to exercise like Authority over all Places purchased by the Consent of the Legislature of the State in which the Same shall be, for the Erection of Forts, Magazines, Arsenals, dock-Yards and other needful Buildings;–And

To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers and all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any Department or Officer thereof.

In my mind two points stand out…from paragraph one “The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes” and from the last paragraph “To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers”.

Seem pretty clear that Congress can levy and enforce taxes, including taxes on those that choose not to purchase insurance.

Looks like another case of a “Faux Conservative” trying legislate from the bench to me.

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@ByteMe I think you got them nailed

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Kyle….you can’t keep score? Try the Michigan Federal Court decision.

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yeah! No more buying car insurance!!!!

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Obamacare only helps 60 million uninsured people get help. It also helps the rest of the nation, 60 million people do not have to file for bankruptcy because they cannot pay their medical bill.

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And by the way, this mandate was a Republican idea until Obama used it in his health care legislation. Is that not hypocritcal?

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What is needed is a fair procedure for the ascertainment of liability between government and the taxpayer. What is needed is more tax specialists in Congress. A specialist learns more and more about less and less. We should not try to give the appearance of reality to visions that will only disappoint.

Now , all of the above being said, if wikileaks were to give people around the earth a peak into the creative ways that government approaches the federal deficit then everybody could try it and see how they make out.

Remember government does not create wealth, it dissipates it. “men should be taught as if you taught them not, and things unknown, proposed as things forgot.”

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JDW: Use the quote in full:

“The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States”

The “tax” of which you speak would not fit into the allowable expenditure categories. It would not be levied in order to spent on Debts, defense, or welfare; it would be a punitive measure. It is also supposed to be for the United States, not the people of the United States. Important distinction.

By your logic, the Congress could tax any activity it wanted at any level it wanted in order force behaviors. Talk about missing the forest for the trees – what part of early American history gives you the idea that the Founders would have gone for that idea? The whole constitution is there to LIMIT federal power, not give it carte blanche. Where do you draw the line?

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Kyle, though I don’t agree with your views on school vouchers and privatizing education, I do agree with you on Obamacare. I’m currently working part-time to make ends meet. How does Mr. Obama (or anyone else) think I could possibly have extra money to suddenly buy health insurance. (For the record, I’ve never used the emergency room). Thanks for bringing all this to our attention.

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Eric at 5:24 – I am glad you haven’t been to the Emergency Room – yet. My healthy 24-year old daughter just ended up in the hospital with viral meningitis – her several days where it was not sure if she would live or die were totally unexpected. Luckily, she had purchased private health insurance, high deductible, even though she “didn’t feel she could afford it”. Her deductible was $5000, but her hospital bill was $10,000 and could have been much worse. She is now paying the $5000 bill. But if you end up in the emergency room, who will pay for your care? Me and my daughter will, that is who. Thanks a lot.

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@Kyle

“JDW @ 4:45: Then why did Congress call it a penalty, rather than a tax, in the law? (PPACA, Section 1501)”

Damn poor choice of words to avoid the Republican spin machine.

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Kyle Wingfield

December 13th, 2010
5:39 pm
“JDW @ 5:36: I agree, the analogy is poor; that’s what I was trying to explain to Cutty.”

By George we agree! Time for another glass of wine!

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This from the Washington Post:

Health care: Legislating from the Bench
By E.J. Dionne

“Every judge I appoint,” George W. Bush declared, “will be a person who clearly understands the role of a judge is to interpret the law, not to legislate from the bench.”

Oh, really? Well, Judge Henry E. Hudson, a Bush appointee, has just “amended” the health-care law by striking down the provision requiring individuals to buy health insurance. That sure sounds like “legislating from the bench” to me. Aren’t the elected branches of government owed a lot of deference by the courts in enacting social policy?

Of course, the rhetoric about “legislating from the bench” is largely, well, rhetorical. When a judge tosses out a law you support, he or she is legislating from the bench. When a judge undoes a law you don’t like, he or she is just “interpreting” the Constitution.

I believe that the last paragraph is the most germane and true.

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@Kyle…opps the cut and paste is off today…that said in my 5:48 I think the way they wrote it is still legal, just circumspect.

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To Mountain Man: You seem not to have watched the entirety of the political wrangling over the health care bill, prior to it being passed in Congress. The Republicans tried to be a part of the process, but the Democrats had closed door meetings, which excluded the Republicans. I do not like many of the ideas that the Republicans have, such as allowing big business to run rough shod over the people of America, but I also cannot condone the Democrats trying to force me to do something that I may not want to do. That is a violation of my civil liberties. That is what the founding fathers set up this government to try and avoid, having lived though it with the unrepresented rule of Great Britain.

There are some very simple ideas that would fix our health care problem in this country. They are as follows:

1) If you sell “insurance” to anyone in a given state, you must accept all persons in that state on the same terms and at the same price. If an insurer has a “we accept anyone at the same price” policy for a business, you must be able to buy into their plan for the same amount of money that the employer is charged on a per-person basis. That is, all plans must be “open enrollment” for everyone within the state – period. This immediately gets rid of the “tie” between employment and health “insurance”, and it also removes one of the biggest issues that small business and self-employed people face – the inability to buy insurance at any reasonable price if there has ever been anything wrong with them medically.
2) All health providers must publish a price list and may not bill or accept payment at anything other than that price; doing so becomes a violation of Robinson-Patman and exposes the provider to civil suit for treble damages. This instantly stops the practice of billing the uninsured or privately insured at a higher price than Medicare, for example – a practice that is rampant, particularly among hospitals.
3) If you show up without insurance or ability to pay with a life-threatening condition, you will be treated, but the hospital cannot cost-shift the bill – it instead bills The Federal Government. To expand on this: We have created an expectation that if you show up needing emergency treatment you will get it, irrespective of ability to pay. This creates a monstrous problem for hospitals and results in the $30 aspirin, among other outrageous distortions. The solution is to have The Federal Government receive all uninsured and unpaid bills, with the debt being immediately paid by the government. Said debt then becomes a collection item against the citizen – a debt to the Treasury, administered by the Internal Revenue Service. If you cannot pay cash, that’s fine – the IRS will be happy to take payments (at interest.) If you’re an illegal alien the Federal Government will be mandated (by statute) to collect from the other nation, and if they refuse to pay, to deduct any such amount from foreign aid of any type and source on a dollar-for-dollar basis.
4) We must reform the tort system. The trial lawyers will hate it. So what. The simplest proposal is this: you may sue only for gross negligence. If the wrong arm is amputated, you have a lawsuit. But we, as a society, must admit and accept that we call it practicing medicine, and by the very name – “practice” – we therefore admit and accept that outcomes will neither be perfect or predictable. But while we must accept that medicine is not a perfect science and outcomes cannot always be predicted, every person has a right to know their physician’s record. In exchange for this partial immunity from suits all outcomes and counts of procedures performed, by the patient’s own evaluation as to degree of success or failure, are to be published online in a searchable database for use by any person at any time in making medical decisions, and the intentional concealment or tampering with such reporting shall be made a felony. The patient’s evaluation shall be an absolutely protected form of speech.
Read the entire article that I pulled this from here: http://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?singlepost=2138483

This is not a perfect proposal, but neither party has even come close, and both are trying to play games by protecting certain special interests that they cater to.

Something else that many aren’t even aware of is the tax increase that it appears we all will be getting next year, thanks to this new law. Any employer contributed healthcare premiums will be reported as income on your W2 for the 2010 tax year. Also, there is a provision for a rather large tax being collected when you sell a house, which I believe becomes effective in 2011. For all of the liberals out there that like this law, enjoy your increased taxes and one day soon, lack of healthcare choice. To the Republicans out there that say I told you so, stop playing games and come up with a REAL solution that does not pander to the big businesses or some special interest.

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