Obamacare easily survives supreme court

[zimmy]

"Although an individual is 50 percent more likely to have a car accident in a year than to be hospitalized, the average bill for a hospitalization is over two and a half times higher than the average loss for a car accident. And, while the bill for a single hospitalization is about the same as the loss from an average house fire, a person is ten times more likely to be hospitalized than to experience a house fire."
"On average, uninsured families can only afford to pay in full for about 12% of the admissions to hospital (hospitalizations) they might experience. Even uninsured families with incomes above 400% of the Federal Poverty Level (FPL) can afford to pay in full for only 37% of their hospitalizations. "

The Value of Health Insurance:#^& Few of the Uninsured Have Adequate Resources to Pay Potential Hospital Bills

[scottw]

The central conservative truth is that it is culture, not politics, that determines the success of a society. The central liberal truth is that politics can change a culture and save it from itself.

Daniel Patrick Moynihan

[rphud]

DPM is likely the most intelligent guy to ever be in government. We could use a few (or 100) in the senate right now.

That all being said, with the health legislation as it is right now and the economy as it is right now (and likely will be for a while), do you really think we can afford this all right now? I think not.

Something to control costs needs to come first, like maybe tort reform and other.

Good. bad or otherwise, I am thinking the economy is way too close to the edge for the government to be changing things up too much right now. Looks like most businesses are sitting on the hiring sidelines waiting for the music to stop. It's not like they aren't making any money. Profits seem to be at an all time high for a lot if not most.

[justplugit]

Originally Posted by rphud

That all being said, with the health legislation as it is right now and the economy as it is right now (and likely will be for a while), do you really think we can afford this all right now? I think not.

Something to control costs needs to come first, like maybe tort reform and other.

That makes sense.

Recently I heard Tom Price MD, Rep Ga. speak on HC. Being a physician
and knowing the the ins and outs of medicine he made a lot of sense.
The 3 things he mentioned were Coverage, Insurance and Waste.

Coverage for all citizens through Tax Policy, tax deductions, tax credits similar to a 401 K and individual/ company/ plans.

Insurance, can become affordable by Tort Reform and allowing competitive Insurance across state lines.

Waste is around $600 because of the practice of defensive medicine.

Imo, the reason for the large increases in HC over the years is the need for Docs to
order every new test there is before diagnosis to prevent lawsuits. I bet there are
very few people over 65 that don't belong to the CAT Scan or MRI Club.
Limiting the lawsuites would go a long way in reducing costs and do away
with the high cost of Malpractice Ins. that is passed along to the patient.

All these things just make sense to do before a massive HC plan, that we
can't afford, is put in place. Anybody disagree?

[detbuch]

Originally Posted by zimmy

"Although an individual is 50 percent more likely to have a car accident in a year than to be hospitalized, the average bill for a hospitalization is over two and a half times higher than the average loss for a car accident. And, while the bill for a single hospitalization is about the same as the loss from an average house fire, a person is ten times more likely to be hospitalized than to experience a house fire."
"On average, uninsured families can only afford to pay in full for about 12% of the admissions to hospital (hospitalizations) they might experience. Even uninsured families with incomes above 400% of the Federal Poverty Level (FPL) can afford to pay in full for only 37% of their hospitalizations. "

The Value of Health Insurance:#^& Few of the Uninsured Have Adequate Resources to Pay Potential Hospital Bills

Your article does not go into the reasons for the high costs, especially the most fundamental reasons. If most do not have sufficient assets to pay for a single hospitalization, how could the hospitals afford to stay in business? Big pockets of insurance or government are motives to raise prices to levels single payers cannot afford. Simply mandating that everyone is insured does nothing to relieve us of the higher costs, but may actually fuel the rise in prices and destroys one of the reasons to buy insurance--to have an advantage over those uninsured.

If most people were not "insured," would hospital costs be so high that they could not afford to access medical care? Or would innovative entrepeneurs seize the opportunity to tap the available market of that majority "uninsured" to provide "affordable" health care? And this applies to the entire "economy"--the competitive free market versus the planned, mandated, gvt. intruded market. The high and rising costs of life have much to do with gvt. regs, mandates, and redistribution, with market forces adjusting, thereby constantly inflating the price of life, but leaving the lower end of "earners" further behind as their power to adjust is weak, thus leading to more gvt. intrusion, and further rising costs and market adjustments, and a greater expansion of the number of those on the lower end and the ensuing greater need for government intrusion and redistribution.

I know it sounds brutal, but more free market and less government "works" better in keeping life "affordable" to a greater number of people. And the greater the government intrusion and regulation of prices and distribution, the larger the number of comparatively "poor" who depend on the government largesse and regulation and the greater the need for the unending cycle of government expansion--which can only lead to collapse or some form of dictatorship.

If, under the current cycle (in which charities actually pay for 80% of the costs "passed on" to others for the medical care of the uninsured) we insist that the uninsured pay for their care out of pocket or, as your article notes, "take out further loans, or sell their house or other non-financial assets to pay some of these costs," would that not motivate those, who are able, to buy insurance? And, if we just can't stand the idea of charities paying most of the cost of the rest, how about some gvt. programs (preferrably States) to pay for them rather than destroying the Constitution?

[scottw]

Originally Posted by detbuch

Your article does not go into the reasons for the high costs, especially the most fundamental reasons. And, if we just can't stand the idea of charities paying most of the cost of the rest, how about some gvt. programs (preferrably States) to pay for them rather than destroying the Constitution?

of course it doesn't when you believe that you can use the power of government to require participation, require the level benefits and all that they must include, set the price for those benefits including designating certain free benefits that must be provided(and probably require they be used...or else) and those that can be denied, arbitrarily tax and penalize based on your need to "provide" and maintain the bureaucracy that is doing the providing.....what do the actual costs and the drivers of those costs matter? you have the power to control everything....don't you?

The Dream of Command Economics - By Yuval Levin - The Corner - National Review Online

[detbuch]

Originally Posted by scottw

of course it doesn't when you believe that you can use the power of government to require participation, require the level benefits and all that they must include, set the price for those benefits including designating certain free benefits that must be provided(and probably require they be used...or else) and those that can be denied, arbitrarily tax and penalize based on your need to "provide" and maintain the bureaucracy that is doing the providing.....what do the actual costs and the drivers of those costs matter? you have the power to control everything....don't you?

The Dream of Command Economics - By Yuval Levin - The Corner - National Review Online

Yes, the fedgov now has the power to control everything, granted by the rewriting of the Constitution, not by Congress through ammendment or convention as prescribed by that Constitution, but by judicial "interpretation." Though, how could honest interpretation of a document conclude something that does not exist in the document and is opposite of what it intended? By learned scholars of the document, not by ignorant amateurs?

There is a tradition in all sorts of scholarship to change little things in original texts to make them "better"--more up to date, more understandable, more relevant, to improve even if by some sly little change of word or meaning that more suits the taste of the sholar than what he considers imperfect text. What follows are more "improvements" by others, even on the previous alterations. This might kindly be looked on as "evolution' of the document. If done with honest revrence to the original text, it rarely becomes a mutation that utterly destroys it. When that occurs, it was intention not evolution.

We have been deceived. The "interpretations" of our Constitution were not honest. Nor was there in the Constitution a mechanism to "interpret" the words as if they were a foreign language. Nor was there an expressed means to "interpret" what the words mean as though they changed meaning with every review. There is no article or provision to "interpret" with varying degrees of scrutiny, nor to expand original meaning to make it elastic so that powers denied become powers granted. Interpretation largely is to determine if the Constitutioin is applicable, and, if so, to apply it. The great difficulties in "interpretation" have mostly been in trying to make the Constitution bend to fit legislation, to make constitutional that which is not.

Which is what Roberts has done with the HCB. Which is what progressive jurisprudence has been doing for 80 years. The Constitution has become the elastic man that can touch all bases while remaining on first and create home runs out of errors. It is a fictitious and ungainly mutation of a once elegant expression of government of, by, and for the people, into a cumbersome, unpredictable license to rule the people.

And I am genuinely curious to know if those who approve of this new Constitution understand what has happened? The HCB and the massive fedgov bureacracy with all its programs and regulations can be repealed, but how do we fix the damage to the Constitution? Do we care? Do we truly believe what has happened is for the best? I ask Spence, likwid, Paul S, and Zimmy, once again:

Were you under the impression that Congress had unlimited powers of taxation before this decision?

If not, do you believe that it now does?

Did you believe that the Interstate Commerce Clause gave Congress unlimited power to regulate individual behaviour?

And, if not, would SCOTUS validation of the HCB under commerce clause power have given Congress unlimited power to regualate behavior?

Does it matter to you if Congress has the power to regulate all your behavior or has unlimited power to tax you?

[scottw]

the Progressive agenda has been moved forward for most of the last century through lies, distortions, threats and thuggery and always at some cost to our Constitutional Guarantees and Protections and through the misuse of power by elected and unelected(appointed) officials each who swear to uphold and defend the Constitution...this healthcare "reform" is no excepton if you consider the way in which it was passed....they justify, in their minds, doing the wrong(Un-Constitutional) thing by claiming that they are doing the "right thing"(increasing government dependence on one of their many social programs in an expression of "compassion") which appears to be the goal of nearly every major Progressive Agenda Point and implementing them always seems to require tricks, deception and excessive political pressure....you'd think that if you are doing the "right" thing it would be self-evident and not require such thuggery and the Constitution would not be such a frequent obstacle for you.....

the people that you mentioned will not answer questions of Constitutionality because I believe, like the officials who swear to uphold the Constitution and then trample it or seek to find ways around it in order to establish their agenda, the have little or no regard for the Constitution, it is evident from their comments that the fancy themselves above all of that and certainly not bound because their ideaology is far superior to....well...anything that has existed to date......not altogether different from a cult.....they place their leaders "philosopher kings" on high pedestals and regardless of how flawed(have you seen their "leaders"?), dangerous or overinflated their sense of self(and who can blame them because they are truly worshipped) might be, they can do no wrong and are to be defended regardless, because the ideaology that they share is more important than anything else(right, wrong, Constitutionality) and the source where each draws their own sense of self-importance, entitlement and feeling of superiority over and quite often, disdain for those with "lesser views"....if their idols, leaders or fellow thinkers fall...then so do they and their precious ideaology, better to go off a cliff (see Europe) than give up on the Utopian Dream....sadly, the Constitution suffers and will continue to until we go off the cliff and it can be replaced with whatever the Progressives have in mind(which no doubt includes many thousands of pages or regulations and taxes and fees), the early Progressives leaned heavily facist(some would say the European facist leaned heavily American Progressive, some form of mutual admiration society at the least) particularly regarding the Italian version in terms of mingling state and private enterprise, go read the words of Mussolini regarding these matters and his state visions and arguments and let me now if anything sounds familiar to you...we continue to move toward one contrived form of statism or another...or perhaps, Americans might wake up and fight for the Constitutional Guarantees and Protections that are our birthright..................

just as FDR was emboldened by re-election, this President would be frightening with a new mandate

[scottw]

Vote Results: House Passes Obamacare

The final vote tally for the Senate version of President Obama's health care reform legislation in the House was 219-212, with 34 Democrats joining all Republicans in opposition.

The key takeaway for opposition groups is that Speaker Pelosi needed to make a last-day deal with Rep. Bart Stupak and his small group of pro-life Democrats in order to achieve passage. That deal came in the form of an executive order from the White House



House repeals Obamacare 244-185

The Hill: The House voted again Wednesday to repeal the 2010 healthcare reform law. Members approved the bill in a 244-185 vote, after five hours of debate that stretched over two days. As expected, just a handful of Democrats supported the GOP repeal bill. Five Democrats, Reps. Dan Boren (Okla.), Larry Kissell (N.C.), Jim Matheson (Utah), Mike McIntyre (N.C.) and Mike Ross (Ark.), sided with Republicans in the final vote.


http://www.quinnipiac.edu/institutes...ReleaseID=1774

July 12, 2012 - American Voters Say Health Care Law Is A Tax Hike, Quinnipiac University National Poll Finds; Most Want Arizona-Type Immigration Law In Their State


The Affordable Care Act (ACA) is a tax hike, American voters say 55 - 36 percent, but in a mixed message, voters agree 48 - 45 percent with the U.S. Supreme Court decision upholding the law, while they say 49 - 43 percent that the U.S. Congress should repeal it, according to a Quinnipiac University national poll released today.


RealClearPolitics - Election Other - Repeal of Health Care Law: Favor/Oppose