Right Wing Judge Says ObamaCares is Constitutional

[Unabogie]

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-...-insurance-upheld-by-appeals-court-panel.html

“Broad regulation is an inherent feature of Congress’s constitutional authority in this area; to regulate complex, nationwide economic problems is to necessarily deal in generalities,” Judge Laurence Silberman wrote. “Congress reasonably determined that as a class, the uninsured create market failures; thus, the lack of harm attributable to any particular uninsured individual, like their lack of overt participation in a market, is of no consequence.”

I'm sure Fox "News" will be all over this.

 

[Upchurch]

Activist RINO judge legislating from the bench!



Also, SOCIALIST and FASCIST!!!

 

[keale]

Activist RINO judge legislating from the bench!



Also, SOCIALIST and FASCIST!!!

Pinko Commie

 

[theprestige]

Seems like a pretty conservative ruling to me: The Commerce Clause means what it means. It's not up to the judge to pretend it means something different if he doesn't like it.

 

[Cain]

Another one infected by Obammunism.

 

[BenBurch]

Seems like a pretty conservative ruling to me: The Commerce Clause means what it means. It's not up to the judge to pretend it means something different if he doesn't like it.

Exactly. Honest judges interpret and uphold law, they do not act on political opinion.

 

[Vorticity]

None of this matters.

It will find its way to the SCOTUS, where it will be ruled unconstitutional in a 5-4 decision.

 

[BenBurch]

None of this matters.

It will find its way to the SCOTUS, where it will be ruled unconstitutional in a 5-4 decision.

By judges who are not honest.

 

[JoeTheJuggler]

None of this matters.

It will find its way to the SCOTUS, where it will be ruled unconstitutional in a 5-4 decision.

I doubt that, but I also disagree that the conflicting district court decisions don't matter.

By the way, they're running in favor of "constitutional" now--with the highest number having been dropped for lack of standing. The SCOTUS could dismiss all the cases for lack of standing too, since so far no one has been affected by the individual mandate. Of course, if they did that, it would be strictly so they don't have to go on record deciding the issue.

I suspect they'll rule it's constitutional. [ETA: The "unconstitutional" decisions relied at least in part on gross mischaracterizations of the law--claiming it's a requirement to buy expensive private insurance even though the majority of people already satisfy the mandate without buying insurance at all.]

 

[Minoosh]

Mandatory health insurance was not an issue with conservatives until Obama took office. They latched onto it because Big Brother was trying to run our lives (just as Big Brother prefers we all drive on the right side of the street, and oddly I hear few complaints about this).

I wouldn't be too sure of the 5-4 vote against mandatory insurance. One mildly redeeming feature of the practice of court-packing is that jurists occasionally get feisty and, with no further need to suck up, do what they think is right.

If the economy is going to add so many part-time jobs clearly the old model of employers providing coverage through group insurance pools is no longer adequate to protect most Americans from a dreaded health catastrophe. Relying on emergency-room treatment to care for the uninsured is just too disruptive. It's financially punitive to people who have insurance, and it puts the onus on hospitals to systematically bankrupt patients who have lost their health insurance but still have assets. Once bankrupt, those people can become a drag on the system in any number of ways.

That's becoming obvious, and the bravado cry of "let them die" has subsided as more people confront the reality that once middle-class people are slipping from the covered pool. Medicare coverage for seniors doesn't render all of them insensible to the destabilizing nature of the U.S. health care system. Maybe this is too optimistic but the presumed polarity of the U.S. electorate may not be as pronounced as you'd think from listening to talk radio or reading unregulated Internet message boards. The lack of consensus is becoming more clearly counterproductive and the implications of the current system are sinking in with people around the country.

 

[mikeyx]

Another one infected by Obammunism.

no you're pretty oblivious to the fact that it was YOUR side who screwed everything up, obama just got handed the mop. One more victim of Right Wing stupidity, so sad....

 

[eeyore1954]

By judges who are not honest.

Of course those who rule against what you want are dishonest. Are the ones who rule in favor of what you want honest?

Can't possibly be that there are those who understand constitutional law beter than you or I can honestly come up with decisions different than what we believe?

 

[eeyore1954]

Mandatory health insurance was not an issue with conservatives until Obama took office.

I hear this a lot do you have evidence for this?

 

[eeyore1954]

Another one infected by Obammunism.

I thought it was spelled Obammmunism!?

 

[Bri]

I hear this a lot do you have evidence for this?

According to NPR:

The last time Congress debated a health overhaul, when Bill Clinton was president, [Orrin] Hatch and several other senators who now oppose the so-called individual mandate actually supported a bill that would have required it.

In fact, says Len Nichols of the New America Foundation, the individual mandate was originally a Republican idea. "It was invented by Mark Pauly to give to George Bush Sr. back in the day, as a competition to the employer mandate focus of the Democrats at the time."

The 'Free-Rider Effect'

Pauly, a conservative health economist at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School, says it wasn't just his idea. Back in the late 1980s — when Democrats were pushing not just a requirement for employers to provide insurance, but also the possibility of a government-sponsored single-payer system — "a group of economists and health policy people, market-oriented, sat down and said, 'Let's see if we can come up with a health reform proposal that would preserve a role for markets but would also achieve universal coverage.' "

The idea of the individual mandate was about the only logical way to get there, Pauly says. That's because even with the most generous subsidies or enticements, "there would always be some Evel Knievels of health insurance, who would decline coverage even if the subsidies were very generous, and even if they could afford it, quote unquote, so if you really wanted to close the gap, that's the step you'd have to take."

One reason the individual mandate appealed to conservatives is because it called for individual responsibility to address what economists call the "free-rider effect." That's the fact that if a person is in an accident or comes down with a dread disease, that person is going to get medical care, and someone is going to pay for it.

"We called this responsible national health insurance," says Pauly. "There was a kind of an ethical and moral support for the notion that people shouldn't be allowed to free-ride on the charity of fellow citizens."​

PolitiFact agrees:

Our search took us back to the health care debates of the early 1990s, when President Bill Clinton tried to shepherd through a national health care plan with help from First Lady Hillary Clinton. The Clinton plan required employers to pay for insurance and then closely regulated both insurers and health care providers through cost controls and purchasing groups.

To counter that, the late Sen. John Chafee, R-R.I., introduced a plan that avoided the employer mandate and cost controls. Chafee's plan, one of several Republican alternatives, created a universal tax deduction for health insurance and gave the poor vouchers to buy policies. It also required everyone to buy insurance -- an individual mandate.

Chafee's plan was backed by a group of Republican senators, including Hatch, according to news reports from the time. When the plan was formally introduced as legislation, Hatch was one of the co-sponsors. Two other current senators also co-sponsored the plan: Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, and Sen. Richard Lugar, R-Ind.

We examined the old legislation, which we found in the THOMAS legislative database. The individual mandate in that proposal appears to work the same as the mandate in the new law. The main difference is how the fines work for those who don't buy insurance. The new law sets a dollar amount; the older proposal set the fee at 120 percent of average premium limits, as determined by the Secretary of Health and Human Services.
​

-Bri

 

[A'isha]

I hear this a lot do you have evidence for this?

You can check this comparison between the 2009 Heath Care bill, the competing 2009 bill proposed by the Republicans, and the bill proposed in 1993 by the Republicans.

Note that Obama's 2009 bill and the Republicans' 1993 bill are far, far more alike (including sharing the requirement that individuals purchase insurance) than the Republicans' 1993 bill and their 2009 bill are.

 

[JoeTheJuggler]

According to NPR:

The last time Congress debated a health overhaul, when Bill Clinton was president, [Orrin] Hatch and several other senators who now oppose the so-called individual mandate actually supported a bill that would have required it.

In fact, says Len Nichols of the New America Foundation, the individual mandate was originally a Republican idea. "It was invented by Mark Pauly to give to George Bush Sr. back in the day, as a competition to the employer mandate focus of the Democrats at the time."

The 'Free-Rider Effect'

Pauly, a conservative health economist at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School, says it wasn't just his idea. Back in the late 1980s — when Democrats were pushing not just a requirement for employers to provide insurance, but also the possibility of a government-sponsored single-payer system — "a group of economists and health policy people, market-oriented, sat down and said, 'Let's see if we can come up with a health reform proposal that would preserve a role for markets but would also achieve universal coverage.' "

The idea of the individual mandate was about the only logical way to get there, Pauly says. That's because even with the most generous subsidies or enticements, "there would always be some Evel Knievels of health insurance, who would decline coverage even if the subsidies were very generous, and even if they could afford it, quote unquote, so if you really wanted to close the gap, that's the step you'd have to take."

One reason the individual mandate appealed to conservatives is because it called for individual responsibility to address what economists call the "free-rider effect." That's the fact that if a person is in an accident or comes down with a dread disease, that person is going to get medical care, and someone is going to pay for it.

"We called this responsible national health insurance," says Pauly. "There was a kind of an ethical and moral support for the notion that people shouldn't be allowed to free-ride on the charity of fellow citizens."​

That was my impression of the history of healthcare reform in the last few decades. I thought the individual mandate was something Democrats accepted as part of a compromise position (realizing that they weren't going to get a single payer system passed ever).

I often cite the House investigation into rescission and post claims underwriting where health insurance industry leaders say that they only way they can discontinue those despicable practices is to institute comprehensive health insurance reform that includes an individual mandate.

 

[mhaze]

You can check this comparison between the 2009 Heath Care bill, the competing 2009 bill proposed by the Republicans, and the bill proposed in 1993 by the Republicans.

Note that Obama's 2009 bill and the Republicans' 1993 bill are far, far more alike (including sharing the requirement that individuals purchase insurance) than the Republicans' 1993 bill and their 2009 bill are.

According to this sick, warp and twisted rationale espoused here by you, Bri, and BenBurch, constitutionality of a largely unpopular Democratic law enacted is rationalized by the fact that something in the past with certain similar aspects was promoted by Republicans.

Little problem with that reasoning?

 

[A'isha]

According to this sick, warp and twisted rationale espoused here by you, Bri, and BenBurch, constitutionality of a largely unpopular Democratic law enacted is rationalized by the fact that something in the past with certain similar aspects was promoted by Republicans.

Little problem with that reasoning?

Yes. Starting with the fact that it's not actually our reasoning.

 

[JoeTheJuggler]

According to this sick, warp and twisted rationale espoused here by you, Bri, and BenBurch, constitutionality of a largely unpopular Democratic law enacted is rationalized by the fact that something in the past with certain similar aspects was promoted by Republicans.

Little problem with that reasoning?

Yeah--it's a straw man.

I have laid out the constitutionality arguments at some length in threads on that topic. There is a sound legal and logical basis for the individual mandate. The problem is with people who like to pick and choose which bits of the Constitution they read and take literally. (Mostly they leave off the authority granted the judiciary to resolve all conflicts arising from the law, including the Constitution so that they can ignore the extensive case law wrt the Commerce Clause authority of Congress.)

The observation that many Republicans have changed their tune on this topic is simply a political observation and has nothing to do with the legal arguments for the constitutional basis of the law.