The lawyers are dancing around several very important issues. Let’s recap:
1. Is the mandatory purchase of insurance by the federal government just another tax? Well, on this one, Obama and his gang actually are being hoisted on their own petard. If they called it a tax it could not be challenged but if they call it a tax then they are actually taxing lower and middle class wage earners. So they didn’t call it a tax and now they are dancing around what it is.
2. Can the government make you buy health insurance? Well they can make you buy darn near anything else so we doubt those arguments will prevail. After all they take your earnings before you even see them for Medicare insurance and for social security insurance and they spend your money in hundreds of ways by designing products and services and demanding reporting and bureaucratic involvement in most everything we do.
3. But if they force you to do it then it is not an open, voluntary act and therefore the contract is void. Good luck. This is one of those principles in law and history that governments will skirt around whenever it suits them. If you are not getting the point by now of this essay it is simply this – either you limit government completely or it completely limits you and your freedom and your choices. Our founding fathers did their best, at the time, to set up a limited government. 200+ years is more than enough time for politicians, judges and bureaucrats (government) to dance around the limitations and then ignore the limitations and then do whatever they want.
4. So could we have levels of health care? Just like we have levels of almost any other product and service? Basic care. Upgraded care. Premium care. Much like we have compact cars. Mid size cars. Full size cars. Low octane gas. Mid octane gas. Premium gas. Wal mart. Costco. Neiman Marcus. There is something developing in health care called “concierge care” and it is already becoming an attractive alternative for the well to do. It will expand as government becomes the dominant decider in health care.
5. But here is the real problem with Obamacare and any other state version of Obamacare. The problem will first show up in the government’s health insurance program – Medicare and Medicaid and then it will expand into the private providers. The problem is the arbitrary determination of “what you get” and “when you get it.” And the gradual decline in the “what you get” and the gradual lengthening of the “when you get it.” And, even with the decline in quality, the price will still rise. Unless you are free to do something different, competition is the only process by which any product or service provider will work hardest to provide the highest quality at the lowest price and government involvement in anything destroys competition. All you need do is look at any service or product supplied by government and you will see a track record of declining quality and rising price.
So, while the lawyers debate commerce clauses and contracts and citizenship you need to think COMPETITION. Or, to state the obvious, the Supreme Court judges need to think COMPETITION. Is Obamacare the vehicle by which private competition is maximized in the health care business? If it is, it should stand on its own. If it isn’t it should fall on its own. But mandatory acquisition of it guarantees that it is removed from the process of competition. Think of it this way. The commerce clause was not included in the constitution to stifle competition. It was put there to prevent restrictions on competition – one state favoring its products and services over another state. Obamacare needs to be eliminated because it violates the purpose of the commerce clause. Only government distortion of the purpose of the commerce clause would produce the discombobulated reasoning that it could be used as the justification for such meddling in commerce.
1 comment:
On a legal basis, the fundamental difference between the individual mandate and Medicare is that the government is mandating that consumers go to private providers and use their services. If the government went to a single payer (government) system, the constitutional question would vanish.
As for the tax versus penalty issue, that is a question of the anti-injunction act. If the Health Care "penalties" as they are described by the Obama administration were a tax (and thus not a penalty), then the anti-injunction act would require that the Supreme Court defer a decision on the issue until the tax was actually imposed. A taxpayer who was forced to pay that tax would have standing to sue only after the tax was imposed on him or her.
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