Supreme Court and the Individual Mandate

[NateS]

You really are drinking the Kool-aid.
AMA -- what a laugh. They're about as objective as AARP.

Here is what you said in your earlier post, Sloop:

Under this atrocious new ObamaCare, doctors will be paid less while asked to do more.
More regulatory committees telling them what they can and cannot do.
More services that are turned down.
More of a struggle to practice medicine.
Doctors are going to have to dramatically increase their patient load because of 32 million more patients.
Estimations are that there will be 160,000 doctors short by 2025, and that doesn't include the huge percentage that are going to quit out of frustration, or at a minimum backing out of the insurances like Medicade or Medicare.

I thought if you were so worried about all the doctors allegedly predicting that health care was going to go down the drain that you might be reassured to learn that:

Most major national medical organizations -- including the American Medical Association, the National Physicians Alliance, the American Academy of Pediatrics, and the Association of American Medical Colleges -- hail the ruling as a victory. Many of these organizations have been strong supporters of the ACA since Congress passed it in 2010.

and that:

that the National Physicians group whose survey you claimed to quote also said:

"At last, the country is moving in a healthy direction on health care," said Dr. Valier Arkoosh, president of the National Physicians Alliance."

I was trying to cheer you up, as I thought you would be happy and relieved to learn that you had been misinformed about what the medical profession thought about the Act!

Nate

[the_nap_ster]

I don't normally get involved in threads like this, but as someone who is in the medical industry: it was an enormous victory. Doctors, almost unanimously, support universal health care, and this is a step in the right direction. NateS is correct. You are welcome to disagree on ideological grounds (though I would argue that you'd be on the wrong side of virtue), but from a pragmatic point of view: doctors think Obamacare is in their best interests. My class of med students literally stood up and cheered when the decision came down.

[NateS]

Putting aside the debate for a moment, these two articles may be helpful to us all, pro and con, in understanding what the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act does and how it will work:

CNN Money: How Health Insurance Mandate Will Work

http://money.cnn.com/2012/06/29/pf/taxe ... /index.htm

CaspianX2: What exactly is Obamacare and what did it change?

http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfi ... it/c530lfx

Best wishes, Nate

[DreamStalker]

. . . makes fun of me or calls me a crazed loon. . . .

Those who have read your posts over the years know that you are far from a loon. (OK, maybe you can be a little "crazed" now and then, but in a good, interesting way.) Your post just sounded a little apocalyptic--and hey, it was Sunday morning, so I couldn't resist the fun of throwing a few scriptures around. Not makin' fun, just havin' fun. Your posts make me think.

Trade used to be based on tangible valuables. Then it was based on perception of value. Then it was based on perceptions of the perceptions of value. Now it is based on the perceptions of the perceptions of the perceptions of . . . [Insert sideways 8 here.] Tangibles have value, but group perceptions can change at any time for a myriad reasons.

Today's "markets" are not just "built" on shaky foundations but are "built" on no foundation at all.

When the model, the representation, is accepted as the more important reality, the actual reality starts to lose meaning as just another defined variable in the game.

Just keep everyone busy playing a mostly meaningless game and then you can distract them enough to rob them blind while you manipulate the rules of the game behind the scenes.

Now who is the loony conspiracy theorist?

Good morning! …

If you want to learn how global finances work and where they're headed go to Max Keiser's site for the fun version or Tyler Durden's Zerohedge site for the overwhelming version or Bill Still's OZ video for the historical version. Chris Martenson has a pay site but has good free stuff that is very informative and useful.

If you like apocalyptic Sundays, Richard Heinberg does a good job with out too much fear as does Tim Bennett's video and also Nafeez Ahmed's Crisis video, but for the dark humor it's very hard to beat Dmitry Orlov (my favorite).

BTW – The information is doom and gloom only from the perspective of the world paradigm we are indoctrinated into from childhood. You can change that world view if you let go of the consumptive and materialistic addiction that has led us to this point in history … a spiritual awakening or a rapture or a reconnection to our Mother Earth or whatever you want, there is a positive outlook to the end of this mess if you change yourself first instead of trying to change everything else.

The whole discussion is moot, though; isn't it? After all, isn't the world ending on 12/21 of this year?

The world is NOT ending.

Modern industrial civilization is ending. It's been in decline for about a decade now. The actual causes were enhanced about [. . . and on, and on, and on.]

This was a joke in reference to the Mayan Calendar end-of-the-world silliness that we've heard so much about over the last several years. It was meant to lighten the mood a bit. I'm sorry that you missed the point.

Don't be sorry, I didn't miss your point of jest … I absconded it to reiterate my own point, except I'm not joking. I'm dead serious, or crazed . . . and on, and on, and on … and yep, it's a lot to absorb all at once. Take your time to research for yourself … but take the time.

Or go back to sleep, to the “Dream” if you prefer and hope that your God, or your government, or somebody will save you when it turns into a nightmare. I'm only trying to sound the irritating snooze alarm for those who may want to wake up to seek the future on their own terms, not some nuckleheaded clueless economist's, or corrupt lying politician's, or greedy corporate elite's … do what you want, it's your dream!

[Sloop]

You really are drinking the Kool-aid.
AMA -- what a laugh. They're about as objective as AARP.

Here is what you said in your earlier post, Sloop:

Under this atrocious new ObamaCare, doctors will be paid less while asked to do more.
More regulatory committees telling them what they can and cannot do.
More services that are turned down.
More of a struggle to practice medicine.
Doctors are going to have to dramatically increase their patient load because of 32 million more patients.
Estimations are that there will be 160,000 doctors short by 2025, and that doesn't include the huge percentage that are going to quit out of frustration, or at a minimum backing out of the insurances like Medicade or Medicare.

I thought if you were so worried about all the doctors allegedly predicting that health care was going to go down the drain that you might be reassured to learn that:

Most major national medical organizations -- including the American Medical Association, the National Physicians Alliance, the American Academy of Pediatrics, and the Association of American Medical Colleges -- hail the ruling as a victory. Many of these organizations have been strong supporters of the ACA since Congress passed it in 2010.

and that:

that the National Physicians group whose survey you claimed to quote also said:

"At last, the country is moving in a healthy direction on health care," said Dr. Valier Arkoosh, president of the National Physicians Alliance."

I was trying to cheer you up, as I thought you would be happy and relieved to learn that you had been misinformed about what the medical profession thought about the Act!

Nate

No, I am not misinformed. 70-90% of doctors, depending on which poll you examine, agree with the points I made. You can throw all the associatioins at me you want, but DOCTORS are what's important.

[Sloop]

I don't normally get involved in threads like this, but as someone who is in the medical industry: it was an enormous victory. Doctors, almost unanimously, support universal health care, and this is a step in the right direction. NateS is correct. You are welcome to disagree on ideological grounds (though I would argue that you'd be on the wrong side of virtue), but from a pragmatic point of view: doctors think Obamacare is in their best interests. My class of med students literally stood up and cheered when the decision came down.

Well surprise surprise -- but it seems that there are a whole bunch who discount what you claim.



http://blog.heritage.org/2012/03/14/sid ... obamacare/

The Doctors Company, which is the largest insurer of physician and surgeon medical liability in the nation, received more than 5,000 surveys, including all specialties and every region in the country. The results weren’t good for the President’s signature piece of legislation.

The survey
http://www.thedoctors.com/ecm/groups/pu ... 004676.pdf

http://communities.washingtontimes.com/ ... imply-opt/

http://www.forbes.com/sites/sallypipes/ ... alth-woes/

[SMenasco]

Is it possible that this whole thing might have more to do with controlling people's actions as opposed to health care? It seems to me If the government controls my health care and enforces all aspects of rules and procedures, even with force, if necessary, it can control most of my decisions and/or actions.

[lazer]

I've come to the conclusion that this thread is useless in this particular forum.

I wish I would have never posted in it.

I think the OP did a "Hit and Run" with this topic as he hasn't posted since.

All opinions are like assholes. Everyone has one.

And for the rest of you who don't agree with none of the above:




Cheers!

/thread

[Sloop]

Let's start with Ms. Guess's contention that tax bills must originate in the House of Representatives. The Court was ruling on the constitutionality of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, an act that in fact originated in the House as H.R. 3590. That's all that matters. Article I, section 7, clause 1 of the Constitution says, "All Bills for raising Revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives; but the Senate may propose or concur with Amendments as on other Bills." I think the mandate was in versions of the law circulating in both houses from the very start, but it doesn't matter which had it first. The actual bill that was passed originated in the House, and the Constitution doesn't care where any particular amendment to the bill was proposed, despite their very thorough analysis of flaws they saw in the tax theory of the PPACA's constitutionality...............

That's probably why Justices Alito, Kennedy, Scalia, and Thomas never thought of this argument

Yours is the FIRST TIME I have read that about it originating in the House. Sorry, but as I've read and heard at least 100 more accounts stating the opposite, I choose not to believe you.

And for the record, here is Scalia's dissent:

the dissenting opinion, written by Justice Scalia:

[T]o say that the Individual Mandate merely imposes a tax is not to interpret the statute but to rewrite it. Judicial tax-writing is particularly troubling. Taxes have never been popular, see, e.g., Stamp Act of 1765, and in part for that reason, the Constitution requires tax increases to originate in the House of Representatives. See Art. I, §7, cl. 1. That is to say, they must originate in the legislative body most accountable to the people, where legislators must weigh the need for the tax against the terrible price they might pay at their next election, which is never more than two years off. The Federalist No. 58 “defend[ed] the decision to give the origination power to the House on the ground that the Chamber that is more accountable to the people should have the primary role in raising revenue.” United States v. Munoz-Flores, 495 U. S. 385, 395 (1990). We have no doubt that Congress knew precisely what it was doing when it rejected an earlier version of this legislation that imposed a tax instead of a requirement-with-penalty. See Affordable Health Care for America Act, H. R. 3962, 111th Cong., 1st Sess., §501 (2009); America’s Healthy Future Act of 2009, S. 1796, 111th Cong., 1st Sess., §1301. Imposing a tax through judicial legislation inverts the constitutional scheme, and places the power to tax in the branch of government least accountable to the citizenry. [...]

The Government’s opening brief did not even address the question—perhaps because, until today, no federal court has accepted the implausible argument that §5000A is an exercise of the tax power. And once respondents raised the issue, the Government devoted a mere 21 lines of its reply brief to the issue. Petitioners’ Minimum Coverage Reply Brief 25. At oral argument, the most prolonged statement about the issue was just over 50 words. Tr. of Oral Arg. 79 (Mar. 27, 2012). One would expect this Court to demand more than fly-by-night briefing and argument before deciding a difficult constitutional question of first impression.

And the conclusion to the disent:
The Court today decides to save a statute Congress did not write. It rules that what the statute declares to be a requirement with a penalty is instead an option subject to a tax. And it changes the intentionally coercive sanction of a total cut-off of Medicaid funds to a supposedly noncoercive cut-off of only the incremental funds that the Act makes available.

The Court regards its strained statutory interpretation as judicial modesty. It is not. It amounts instead to a vast judicial overreaching. It creates a debilitated, inoperable version of health-care regulation that Congress did not enact and the public does not expect. It makes enactment of sensible health-care regulation more difficult, since Congress cannot start afresh but must take as its point of departure a jumble of now senseless provisions, provisions that certain interests favored under the Court’s new design will struggle to retain. And it leaves the public and the States to expend vast sums of money on requirements that may or may not survive the necessary congressional revision.



So, at a minimum, the debate is over which version of the legislation is valid in-so-far "origination". Scalia believes it NOT to be HR 3590.

More for your reading pleasure:

http://sonoranalliance.com/2012/06/29/n ... sentation/

http://www.theihcc.com/en/communities/p ... p9ows.html

[greenguru]

Wow. There seems to be a lot of ideology running rampant here. Lets talk reality. Today I go on COBRA. I can have great insurance for $900 plus a month for 18 months. 18 months takes me to 2014 when the Affordable Healthcare act says "preexisting conditions don't matter". Those people who have been mandated will have to pay $95 for the year for not buying health insurance. I am not feeling exceptionally sympathetic.

[PST]

Let's start with Ms. Guess's contention that tax bills must originate in the House of Representatives. The Court was ruling on the constitutionality of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, an act that in fact originated in the House as H.R. 3590. That's all that matters. Article I, section 7, clause 1 of the Constitution says, "All Bills for raising Revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives; but the Senate may propose or concur with Amendments as on other Bills." I think the mandate was in versions of the law circulating in both houses from the very start, but it doesn't matter which had it first. The actual bill that was passed originated in the House, and the Constitution doesn't care where any particular amendment to the bill was proposed, despite their very thorough analysis of flaws they saw in the tax theory of the PPACA's constitutionality...............

That's probably why Justices Alito, Kennedy, Scalia, and Thomas never thought of this argument

Yours is the FIRST TIME I have read that about it originating in the House. Sorry, but as I've read and heard at least 100 more accounts stating the opposite, I choose not to believe you.

Sloop,

Let me take a minute to get over my hurt feelings at being thought a liar and then set you straight about whether or not the PPACA is H.R. 3590. As a lawyer, sometimes I have to look this kind of thing up. There are standard, objective sources we go to for legislative history. Some of these, like Westlaw and LEXIS, are subscription services, so in order to cite a source everyone can check for themselves without payment I will use the official Library of Congress (LOC) website. They all say the same thing, though, and if I were at the office I could just as easily drag out the old-fashioned printed copy of the U.S. Code. If you think maybe the LOC is part of some kind of conspiracy to conceal the origin of the PPACA then I give up. This is the enrolled bill as printed by the Government Printing Office, and it says H.R. 3590 right at the top:

http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/BILLS-111h ... 590enr.pdf

Here is the complete legislative history of H.R. 3590, from its introduction on September 17, 2009, by Representative Rangel, and its reference to the House Committee on Ways and Means, to its signing by the President on March 23, 2010:

http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z ... 03590:@@@S

It's a House bill, and that's all there is to it. I believe you when you say that you have heard otherwise from at least 100 sources, but that just goes to show how fast and wide misinformation spreads through the network of right wing blogs, publications, and radio shows. Malkin, Red State, Drudge, Newsmax, TownHall, Limbaugh, Atlas Shrugs, Newsbusters, and on and on. Once it starts there is no stopping it, true or not. I invite you to think about how many times in the last few days you have heard this bit of hopeful speculation about how the PPACA must be invalid because it originated in the Senate, and then worry about what other "facts" you have picked up and believed because you saw them in multiple sources. The trouble is, those sources just echo one another without a reality check from outside the loop. The guy who has written most cogently about this, Julian Sanchez, actually works at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, and a number of thoughtful conservatives like David Frum have written about the danger it poses to their movement.

As for your quotations from the dissenting opinion, nowhere does it say that the PPACA originated in the Senate. Look at it carefully. It mentions that tax bills must originate in the House of Representatives, but it never says that this one didn't. The dissenters are accusing the Chief Justice of turning the PPACA into something Congress didn't intend, and thus originating a tax bill in the Supreme Court ("imposing a tax through judicial legislation"). The second quoted paragraph has to do with the issue of direct taxes, not where tax bills must originate. So there is no "debate" over this. The dissenting opinion never says that the PPACA is anything other than H.R. 3590. This was a House bill, and not one justice says otherwise, only some wishful thinking amateurs grasping at straws and quoting one another.

[NateS]

Yours is the FIRST TIME I have read that about it originating in the House. Sorry, but as I've read and heard at least 100 more accounts stating the opposite, I choose not to believe you.

And for the record, here is Scalia's dissent: *********

Sloop, reading and quoting the dissenting opinions in a US Supreme Court Decision always makes the losing side, whether conservatives or liberals, feel better. If it makes you feel better, that's good.

But that doesn't make it the law of the land. Just a written preservation of the views of the side which lost the argument. No more and no less.

Everyone has to pick up and move on, the same as you would expect the rest of us to do had your view prevailed.

Regards, Nate

[zoocrewphoto]

I am an independent! I find it interesting that everyone who is telling be how bad Obamacare has some sort of Govt. Healthcare. They either have medicare, or are in congress and part of the Federal Employees group, or are retired Military with Tricare. This is just an observation. Think about it.

I work in a grocery store. I make less than $30,000 a year. I am against Obamacare. I just do not see how it can be funded if only those without current insurance pay into it. They need people who currently have insurance to lose their current insurance and pay into the new system in order to fund it. I like my current insurance. I do not want to lose it and thyen be forced to pay for something else instead.

My doctor does not accept new patients medicare or medicaid anymore. She has 4 customers left. She also does not do workers comp. If I lose my insurance and have to buy the government plan, I will have to find a new doctor.

I am also tired of hearing Nancy Pelosi talking about this being a penalty for the free riders. Um, what about the people who choose not to work? I'm not talking about the people who got laid off and can't find a new job. I'm talking about lazy people who would rather not work. There are plenty of people who simply choose not to work, or they defraud the system to get disability or welfare. I hear people say it is too expensive to deal with them. So, we give them a free ride with income and healthcare. And then Nancy Pelosi wants to punish people who work for a living.

How is this going to solve the problem of people going to the emergency room for basic health care. The only people who do that know will just qualify for the free help anyway. And the rest of us will still be paying for it anyway.

[pats]

How is this going to solve the problem of people going to the emergency room for basic health care. The only people who do that know will just qualify for the free help anyway. And the rest of us will still be paying for it anyway.

Dragging this discussion onto topic for the forum, emergency room treatment of resulting strokes etc. is an extraordinarily ineffective and inefficient way of managing sleep apnea. It might well be cheaper, and would certainly be much more humane, to treat the underlying chronic problem than to treat the acute secondary problems.

[Sloop]

Sloop,

Let me take a minute to get over my hurt feelings at being thought a liar and then set you straight about whether or not the PPACA is H.R. 3590.

I never said you were a liar -- I simply choose not to buy into your explanation.

Here is a direct quote from Wikipedia --
The Affordable Health Care for America Act (or HR 3962)[1] was a bill that was crafted by the United States House of Representatives in November 2009. At the encouragement of the Obama administration, the 111th Congress devoted much of its time to enacting reform of the United States' health care system. Known as the "House bill," it was the House of Representative's chief legislative proposal during the health reform debate, but the Affordable Health Care for America Act as originally drafted never became law.............

On December 24, 2009, the Senate passed an alternative health care bill, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (H.R. 3590).[2] In 2010, the House abandoned its reform bill in favor of amending the Senate bill (via the reconciliation process) in the form of the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010.

The Senate failed to take up debate on the House bill and instead took up H.R. 3590, a bill regarding housing tax breaks for service members.[161] [my insert -- which btw HAVING NOTHING TO DO WITH HEALTH CARE was passed 416-0] As the United States Constitution requires all revenue-related bills to originate in the House,[162] the Senate took up this bill since it was first passed by the House as a revenue-related modification to the Internal Revenue Code. The bill was then used as the Senate's vehicle for their health care reform proposal, completely revising the content of the bill.[163] The bill as amended incorporated elements of earlier proposals that had been reported favorably by the Senate Health and Finance committees.

Finally -- here is the actual timeline of healthcare reform:

July 15, 2009 – U.S. Senate HELP Committee: Passed Affordable Health Choices Act (S. 1679)
October 13, 2009 – U.S. Senate Finance Committee: Passed American’s Healthy Future Act (S. 1796)
November 7, 2009 – U.S. House: Passed Affordable Health Care for America Act (H.R. 3962)
December 24, 2009 – U.S. Senate: Passed Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (H.R. 3590)
March 21, 2010 – U.S. House: Passed Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (H.R. 3590), Public Law 111-148.
March 25, 2010 – U.S. Senate: Passed Reconciliation Act (H.R. 4872), making changes to H.R. 3590 (see a section-by-section summary), Public Law 111-152.


So obviously there is -- at the least - some doubt as to whether the process meets Constitutional muster for PPACA having actually originated in the House. This will be the CENTER of debate in the months to come.