From Stark
The individual health care mandate approved in Massachusetts under then-Gov. Mitt Romney–requiring everyone to buy health care insurance–was enacted with the help of the late Sen. Ted. Kennedy and President George W. Bush, plus backing from conservative groups like the Heritage Foundation.
So says Ryan Lizza’s lengthy report in the June 6 issue of the New Yorker. Regrettably, you have to pay to see the full article online, but there is a concise summary.
Why were Bush and Kennedy involved? Because Massachusetts had a special funding arrangement with federal medical payment systems that needed to stay in place for the Massachusetts plan to work.
The article also notes that during the 2008 campaign, Obama bashed Hillary Clinton for favoring an individual mandate. But once he got in office, Obama’s economic analysts told him the same thing that Mitt Romney had learned: universal care only makes sense when everyone has to pay a fair share.
At the time, Romney and the Republican theorists at the Heritage Foundation touted that idea as basic conservatism: no free ride.
While the 11th Circuit has joined some other federal judges in ruling against the mandate in Obama’s federal plan, this isn’t going to be over until the Supreme Court weighs in, or until Congress changes the law.
Shhhhhhhhhh!!!! you are ruining the GOP narrative!
“universal care only makes sense when everyone has to pay a fair share.”
There’s the rub, “fair” to whom? Obama changed his position because that was the price of getting the insurance industry onboard.
Maybe with some competition we’d learn what a fair charge for health care is. But no, we couldn’t even have a public option, let alone single payer.
We’ve go universal care for the kleptocrats and corporations profiting from people in need.
This just out:
“11th Circuit says mandate unconstitutional….
The 2-1 ruling marks the first time a judge appointed by a Democrat has voted to strike down the mandate. Judge Frank Hull, who was nominated by former President Bill Clinton, joined Chief Judge Joel Dubina, who was appointed by George H.W. Bush, to strike down the mandate.
Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0811/61218.html#ixzz1Ur0fuYIk
Headed to the supreme’s now, any bets on the outcome?
AFY!!theheelotsheepdog!!!
I’m hoping this sop to special interests is thrown out. With Obamacare out of the way, and with the people of this country starting to get sick of being the victims of insurance companies, banks, the drug cartel, and everything else that’s come to be the new American way, we got a chance for real reform and at least a public option.
It was a worthwhile experiment, apparently.
Unfortunately, it appears to be a failure.
In the private sector, the company would fail, the assets would be sold off, and the investors would redeploy their money elsewhere.
Only in government does a failed enterprise attract more assets, even while blame is being piled on the peripheral players, in an attempt to expand the failed idea to the whole country.
It should have died.
Geez, you folks are just tripping over yourselves to put a toe tag on this, aren’t you.
You’ve got a point, Shane. Given their take in Citizens United v. FEC, the Supreme Corp’s quite likely to uphold the mandate for their brethren.
Since the Supreme Court rules on legal issues based on politics rather than what the law says, this could go either way. I suspect they will table this one until after the 2012 election. Even though the individual mandate doesn’t kick in until 2014, there are provisions that are supposedly affecting state budgets already. That would be the real reason on deciding this before the 2013 session. If the Supremes do rule on this next year, it will be a good read on their states’ rights orientation.
Pelosi: “We Have to Pass the Bill So That You Can Find Out What Is In It”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hV-05TLiiLU
Anyone who thinks this is OK cannot be taken seriously.
Readers here might be interested in this Slate article about Jonathon Gruber, an econ prof at MIT, whose ideas have driven the legislation: http://www.slate.com/id/2300505/?from=rss&wpisrc=twitter_socialflow
” Jonathan Gruber advised both the governor and the president on health care, and even though Romney now derides Obama’s law as “disastrous,” Gruber’s ideas animate both efforts….”
Bush was a progressive. Just because he was an enabler doesn’t make it acceptable.
There is no such thing as fair. Why should a person who takes care of them self: doesn’t smoke, doesn’t drink, eats right, isn’t overweight, doesn’t have unprotected sex, doesn’t do extreme sports,
have to pay for a drunk, drug addled, sexual deviant who is 200 pounds overweight, diabetic, and who likes to skateboard down steep, busy city streets?
…[The individual mandate] is “breathtaking in its expansive scope,” the court wrote. “The government’s position amounts to an argument that the mere fact of an individual’s existence substantially affects interstate commerce, and therefore Congress may regulate them at every point of their life. This theory affords no limiting principles in which to confine Congress’s enumerated power.”
In other words, if the government can impose this kind of “economic mandate”—if it can force individuals to enter contracts with private companies “from birth to death”—there are no longer limits on what it cannot do. “These types of purchasing decisions are legion,” Judges Hall and Dubina write….
http://www.economicsandethics.org/2011/08/breathtaking-in-its-expansive-scope-individual-mandate-of-the-affordable-care-act-rejected-again.html
It’s about freedom not health care!
AFY!!theheelotsheepdog!!!
“It’s about freedom not health care!”
Fine, Joe, but then you’ve got to oppose the monopolies that presently control the “free market” for health care services.
If you aren’t able to restore competition one way or another, the last resort is an even bigger monopoly on the other side of the negotiating table, ie single payer.
I’s against all monopolies, public &/or private!
The solution as all solutions goes lies with choice and freedom:
Power to the People!
AFY!!theheelotsheepdog!!!
So let’s give it the straight face test, Joe. Do you really believe that electing a Republican congress and President will mean strong anti-trust initiatives against any part of the drug, medical or insurance segments of the health care system?
It’s isn’t about R’s or D’s to me but it is about conservatives who believe in the free market no matter what initial they hail to.
AFY!!theheelotsheepdog!!!
That’s OK, Joe. I don’t think anyone expected you to give a straight answer.
Conservative and freemarket is pretty straight IMHO.
There needs to be a huge house cleaning in both parties and time is running out for both if they don’t, mainly because time is running out for our country.
It’s hard for a drunken sailor to get drunk when they are broke and no bar will give them credit.
AFY!!theheelotsheepdog!!!
Maybe you forgot the question, Joe.
“Do you really believe that electing a Republican congress and President will mean strong anti-trust initiatives against any part of the drug, medical or insurance segments of the health care system?”
It’s understandable, your inability to give it a simple answer. There’s really no third party choice.
So do you really believe the Republicans would do one thing to challenge the health care industry’s monopoly?
In too many cases antitrust laws in the past has harmed the public it is supposed to protect by denying competition.
“Antitrust laws have always been used to protect less efficient firms from the rigors of the competitive process. This protectionism is most obvious in the private cases—95 percent of all antitrust–but it also evident in the classic government cases as well. Antitrust attacks on firms such as IBM, United Shoe Machinery, DuPont, Procter & Gamble, and Alcoa have had the economic effect of sheltering less efficient business organizations. Antitrust restrictions on business mergers have had the economic effect of protecting entrenched managers and corporate assets from efficient reorganization. Antitrust restrictions on price reductions, price discrimination, and tying agreements have all served to protect inefficient competitors and harm consumers…..
http://www.independent.org/publications/books/book_summary.asp?bookID=31
IMHO the solution is the free market and competition (“competition is a process not a structure”); giving the individual the control of choice and getting the middleman whether public or private out of the middle.
Our problems today have been create by many of the current members of both the democratic and republican parties, there are many like me who think that by thinking those who create this mess can solve this mess is really just barking up the wrong tree, whereas the right tree really just don’t have those responsible for this problem perched up in it!
Term limits are part of the answer whether inscribed by law or utilized at the ballot box.
AFY!!theheelotsheepdog!!!