My gut reaction so far....
Disappointing, but who is really surprised? I guess I shouldn't be. Is it Constitutional for the Federal government to force the public to buy a service or a product, or be punished if you don't? And then call it a tax? This is already being done and will continue to be done as long as the "progressive" left dominates both parties and the entire federal government. Since Franklin Delano Roosevelt set up the Social Security Administration, the public has been forcibly taxed for a social welfare program. Since Lyndon Baines Johnson set up Medicare and Medicaid, the public has been forcibly taxed for a medical social welfare program. Since the Federal government some time ago decided to allow millions of illegal immigrants into this country and gave them free healthcare and educations, the public has been forcibly taxed to provide these services for them. States have been bankrupted by the herculean effort to provide. I am sure there are more examples, but those are the ones that instantly come to mind.
Another aspect of this entire scene struck me today and that is Ruth Bader Ginsburg's age. Now that SCOTUS has brought forth this appalling decision, she can step down and Obama can replace her with someone equally Socialist "Progressive" on the court. This takes Romney's options for Supreme Court nominations off the table, unless one of the others dies or becomes incapacitated. Not that Romney would be any guarantee of anything when you realize that GW Bush appointed Justice Roberts who gave the deciding vote on this. I am wondering where is the store where they sell the sheep's clothing for these people.
Yet another aspect of this is the short term boon that insurance companies will gain....that is BEFORE they are overwhelmed and go belly up after which the Feds bail them out and take over all of it. Truth is, the Feds have just taken over all of our health care, but the insurance companies are temporarily the middleman. If it isn't repealed, we'll just have to see how that goes.
Then there is the fine. (tax?) I see a correlation in this to the light bulb ban, believe it or not. The incandescent bulb was banned, but the replacement for it was a more expensive, inferior product benefiting light bulb producers such as GE. Even though the fine doesn't exist, you are forced to purchase what GE produces....just like you are forced to buy what the insurance companies and the government collude to produce in health care policies. Is this fascism?
As Obama has already said, this Obamacare monster is just a stepping stone to the real goal and that is single payer.
1776 was 236 years ago. Evidently the blood that was spilled and the fortunes lost to gain and preserve freedom for Americans was all for naught. Incrementally, deliberately, and ever so insidiously, over a hundred years now, our Constitutional freedoms have been frittered away in small bits and large chunks. Today's SCOTUS decision is one of those large chunks.
The early Patriots threw the tea in the harbor to show their disgust with the taxing powers of the King of England. How do you throw your health care into the harbor? You can't. How do you throw your retirement in the harbor? You can't.
If Roberts is right, that the entire question relies on the taxing power of Congress, this country better have an epiphany on Congress. Yes. Was that his strategy, as some are suggesting today? Did Roberts give us an out? No one knows. But it goes beyond Congress, in my humble opinion. The policies of the Socialist left have permeated Congress and both parties, yes. But it is the President in these situations who drove the Socialist goal home. It was FDR, LBJ, and now BHO who have set the stage and signed Americans into slavery, taxing for Socialist goals. When a President of the United States not only fails to uphold the Constitution, but creates a monster such as these Socialist programs are, I can't help but wonder how deep the flaws go that an anti-Constitutional person swears to uphold the Constitution when taking office, but then turns around and trashes that very Constitution, trashing the freedoms we are guaranteed. When Congress puts a bill in front of the President to sign that is un-Constitutional, when does the President veto it? When is it treason? When is it impeachable? When? Evidently never, according to SCOTUS.
This Obamacare Socialist healthcare system will fail all of us. At for the Nov. election, I am expecting massive voter fraud, thousands of illegals voting, and no way out in November. If Romney wins, we can hope that Romney will do everything he can to repeal it, that Congress will repeal it. But by then, how much of it is already implemented? The only slightly viable possible avenue out of this Obamacare debacle may be "nullification" by the States.
I'm still so angry I can't see straight. Roberts had the chane to put linits on the commerce clause, which he did some what, and stop this terrible health care law. He could of said to the congress that if they want this law, they wull have to redo it as a tax. Instead he declared that it was a tax. Obama and the Democrats were sonsistant is saying it was not a tax. If Congress had intended for it to be a tax, the bill would have been originated in the House instead of the Senate. This is judicial activism at its worse. He has set the precedent that when ever government wants to controlour behavior, all they have to do is tax us enough to force us to do what they want. America was betrayed!
ReplyDeleteI'm so glad to hear from you, Jim. I have been trying all day to absorb this news and spent a good bit of time reading others' thoughts on it. I've read the "silver lining" theories ...about not expanding the commerce clause, but throwing this back in the faces of the politicians who created this "tax." And, in a way, I can see that argument. But I was just reading the dissenting opinion...showing neither the commerce clause or the tax argument work in conjunction with the Constitution. To tax someone for an "inactivity" is beyond the pale. To tax or force someone to purchase something is also beyond the limits of the Constitution, but I have to say that Medicare does exactly that, so the precedent in health care related commerce already exists. Since this is bigger than medicare and the largest tax increase in history, plus...since the cost cannot be born even by the tax increase....the entire system will implode. And you have to know that is the goal all along. Government run Socialized medicine was and is the absolute goal and control of the left. Rationing will follow naturally.
ReplyDeleteSo...today was kind of like another post 9-11 day...where we got hit so hard it is hard to grasp. We are suckered in...and up to our ears in it now. Sucker punched.
Yes, America has been lied to and betrayed by just about 90% of our government officials for quite some time now. This was just another one...a big one...but just another nail in the coffin.
This must be reversed. It cannot stand. Or....let the whole damn thing implode and we start over. We'll see which way it goes.
Cheryl
ReplyDeletere "Then there is the fine. (tax?) I see a correlation in this to the light bulb ban, believe it or not. "
Exactly...
The issue is whether government energy standards on light
bulbs, cars, buildings, washing machines etc is justified
Answer is no, not just because of free choice or because overall
energy savings are much smaller than supposed as referenced,
but because even if they had to be targeted, then
-- tax/subsidy (liberal ideology, for bankrupt California, where tax pays for lower cost of alternatives so "people not just hit by taxes" and govmt can gain some income), or
-- market competition (right wing ideology)
would both be better than regulations - also to save energy, as referenced
Freedom Light Bulb
"The Deception behind the Arguments used to ban Light Bulbs and other Products"
I like your site, Peter. Good job on explaining and rebutting this stupid light bulb ban. You are so correct that it isn't just about light bulbs, but more about control through fascist and communist policies. You are also right that the energy savings, however miniscule if any, does nothing to "save the planet." Something doesn't smell right all around us from the stinking government.
ReplyDeleteThanks for stopping by!
Thanks Cheryl
Deleteintriguing other sites you have... "Painted Plums"
Paintedplums.blogspot.com with Grateful for Lemonade, Serrano or Sargent... obviously a linguistic bent too there somewhere!
Re Healthcare
I would actually say all citizens should have basic healthcare as a citizen right
without having to pay for it via insurance companies but, as in some European countries, still having to pay token treatment fees to avoid system abuse:
Light bulb is a natural market solution, healthcare is not, because the more you need the health insurance, the less the companies want to touch you.
Obamacare is totally wrong
1.in still forcing people to turn to insurance companies and
2. in turn trying to force insurance companies to accept unprofitable cases.
Always go with the flow:
Market solutions were appropriate, Universal citizen rights were appropriate.
The other point is that ordinary US citizens are taxed anyway to pay for the uninsured when they have emergency/necessary treatment they cant pay for.
Much better cut out the bureaucracy,
cut out the insurance companies (for basic healthcare rights), in my opinion... and I am normally very free market / libertarian as seen from blog!
Whoa...we may agree on the light bulb, but we certainly have no common ground on health care. You obviously think the government can't handle light bulbs, but can handle your intimate personal health care decisions? Single payer is your goal? Health care is not a "right." So we part ways emphatically! The safety net that Americans have paid for uninsured has been severely abused by illegal immigrants, stretching the system beyond capability. The poor already had that safety net, which might have worked had the system not been swamped by millions of illegals. Accessibility to health care worked quite well until LBJ created the government monsters of Medicare and Medicaid. Prior to that, health care was very accessible and affordable.
ReplyDeleteYou cannot have both "market solutions" and "single payer" health care. The two concepts cannot co-exist.
Bottom line, if you think Kathleen Sebelious and her lovely friend, Ezekiel Emanuel, should make your health care decisions...you and I are not on the same page at all. And if you think the IRS should be the collections agency for the health care industry, just wait until they force that rfid chip into you to drain your bank account. Disastrous.
Thanks!
ReplyDeleteThough govmt would not make healthcare decisions, the medical professionals would.
Hospitals self-run and cooperate with other hospitals within overall budgets regarding what
public system can afford but that includes basic healthcare for all.
It is also a matter of efficiency, since all those poor/illegals get treated anyway for humanitarian reasons whatever system one has - with taxpayers still paying for it.
Another big problem in USA is the litigation issue raising overall costs so as in Europe codes should be laid down more exactly regarding malpractice, which again is easier to define if there is a defined basic healthcare standard.
As said the other reason to keep down costs is to bypass the insurance companies, the fact that they don't insure those with prior illness in free market situations, and bypass the registration and claims and counter claim unproductive bureaucracy hassle.
It is not a matter of excluding private medicine, but of making basic healthcare more efficient
in terms of overall cost.
I only published this because I believe you are surely joking. You must go read Ezekiel Emanuel's treatise called "The Complete Lives System." Or please look up Betsy McCaughey and she will explain how off the mark you are.
ReplyDeleteAgain, you are the person who realized the government cannot wisely dictate light bulbs....why in the heck are you coming back here saying the government can manage health care. Please don't come back here until you educate yourself some more on this subject.
Here is something for you to chew on...
"View a list of the members of the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force here. Nowhere do I see the name Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, but since he worked hand-in-hand with the architects of ObamaCare, and has spoken publicly about what ObamaCare should and should not do, it is reasonable to expect that some of his thoughts about health care will be mirrored among the Task Force members. Here’s an example:
Savings, he writes, will require changing how doctors think about their patients: Doctors take the Hippocratic Oath too seriously, “as an imperative to do everything for the patient regardless of the cost or effects on others” (Journal of the American Medical Association, June 18, 2008).
The above statement was quoted by Betsy McCaughey, a former Lt. Governor for the State of New York, in an op-ed in The New York Times. Former New York Mayor Ed Koch quotes her in the Weekly Standard. I attempted to find the article in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA). On doing an online search for the quote, it came up indexed on Google under the title of The Perfect Storm of OverUtilization. Only the first 150 words were available to me since I do not have a log-in at JAMA. I believe it is safe to say, that Emanuel is not being misquoted. Numerous other quotes attributed to him have been rebutted as ‘posing thought’ not ‘advocating for’ an idea – such as this:
Emanuel, however, believes that “communitarianism” should guide decisions on who gets care. He says medical care should be reserved for the non-disabled, not given to those “who are irreversibly prevented from being or becoming participating citizens . . . An obvious example is not guaranteeing health services to patients with dementia” (Hastings Center Report, Nov.-Dec. ’96).
He explicitly defends discrimination against older patients: “Unlike allocation by sex or race, allocation by age is not invidious discrimination; every person lives through different life stages rather than being a single age. Even if 25-year-olds receive priority over 65-year-olds, everyone who is 65 years now was previously 25 years” (Lancet, Jan. 31).
Zeke Emanuel was, and may still be, a health policy advisor to the head of Office of Management and Budget. He held that position when Peter Orzag was there. Cannot confirm he is still there, as we are two OMB-heads down the road now. But working out of the White House on health policy, Ezekiel Emanuel believes physicians take their hippocratic oath too serious. Can we think he will not have some influence on the thought processes of the U.S. Preventative Services Task Force."