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Ken M
Mountain climber
Los Angeles, Ca
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Jun 28, 2012 - 02:22pm PT
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What’s up with the condescending attitude? I have a lot of experience with health care as a very successful patient, and survivor of a critical condition, who is interactive and pro-active with my doctors and the entire process.
However, your experience, as we say, consists of an "N" of one. It is highly biased by your specific circumstances, and may, or may not, apply to other patients in other circumstances. How about the patients that were semi-successful, how about the non-survivors?
We tend, as intellectual humans, to try to simplify things. Some times that works, and some times that doesn't. Looking at individual cases and extrapolating to the general system is almost always wrong, without specific analysis.
In the earlier days of advanced CPR, someone made the following observation:
We are trying to get the heart re-started beating.
When they do open heart surgery with bypass, they stop the heart, then at the end of the case, restart it. It was found that using a strong solution of Calcium caused the heart to spontaneously contract, facilitating the restart.
So, somewhat brilliantly, they expanded this to administering Calcium via IV, or even directly into the heart during advanced CPR, to facilitate making the heart beat again.
Great concept, fairly simple technically, every ER and many ambulances in America stocked and administered Calcium (a natural agent, not a drug!)
Only one problem. When someone finally did some outcome studies, it was found that there was a 25% reduction in success, when Calcium was used.
Another way of saying that: for every 100 patients that would have been successful, 25 died.
I administered a hell of a lot of Calcium as an ER doc, and I've always been haunted by that.
So you may be a lover of technology and what it does, but I am a skeptic, and always will be.
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JEleazarian
Trad climber
Fresno CA
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Jun 28, 2012 - 02:36pm PT
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I wonder how many of the vehemently anti-healthcare posters have ever actually travelled outside the US? You know, to countries like Germany, Canada, Belgium, and Norway that are bankrupt hellholes because of socialized medicine?
Vehemently anti-healthcare? That strikes me as a grave distortion. The opponents of ACA, or of European-style single payer systems, are hardly against health care. Rather, they are against forcing that system on those who currently have strong health coverage now.
Look at the discussion between Kris and Ken. The issue isn't pro- or anti- healthcare. The issue is about better or worse care.
Incidentally, yes, I have traveled abroad. I also have four first cousins living in France, one in Montreal, and one in Mexico City. My wife and I have close friends in Canada, Germany and Austria, and many co-workers from the UK.
The implicit assumption that critics of European or Canadian health care systems base their views on ignorance leads those with that mind set to make arguments designed only to convince each other, not those with whom they disagree.
John
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Binks
climber
Uranus
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Jun 28, 2012 - 02:37pm PT
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Roberts made it easy to collect since he ruled it a tax. Yes, you can get into trouble by not paying taxes.
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Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
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Jun 28, 2012 - 02:42pm PT
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Roberts made it easy to collect since he ruled it a tax. Yes, you can get into trouble by not paying taxes.
actually, there is LITTLE "enforcement" power given to the IRS to collect the "penalty"
the hope is that, over time, people will get the concept, have insurance, and there will be less and less need to collect any tax penalty for not having insurance when you can afford it
It is almost completely up to the IRS to decide when and how they will enforce this
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Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
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Jun 28, 2012 - 02:46pm PT
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Jesus Christ
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Gary
climber
"My god - it's full of stars!"
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Jun 28, 2012 - 02:48pm PT
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Hey, Silver, your Norman Thomas quote is bullsh#t. What a surprise, eh? Here's an accurate quote from Thomas:
To us Americans much has been given; of us much is required. With all our faults and mistakes, it is our strength in support of the freedom our forefathers loved which has saved mankind from subjection to totalitarian power.
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cragonym
climber
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Jun 28, 2012 - 02:52pm PT
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Brandon-
climber
The Granite State.
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Jun 28, 2012 - 02:55pm PT
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Neat, a cute kid is going to sway my opinion.
Oh wait, it's actually facts that sway my opinion.
Try those.
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Karl Baba
Trad climber
Yosemite, Ca
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Jun 28, 2012 - 02:55pm PT
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BTW not only to 45,000 people die here every year due to not having health care (posted that link already) but medical expenses are the leading cause of bankruptcy.
The system is totally broken and it's taking this incremental step to approach fixing it.
Those who think the current system in fine (fatty) are just in life for themselves, and better hope their circumstances wont change
peace
Karl
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Gary
climber
"My god - it's full of stars!"
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Jun 28, 2012 - 03:13pm PT
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No suprise but I see no proof he did not say that and for what its worth I dont care who says what if they are politicians they are all full of sh#t.
Do you even know who Norman Thomas is?
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Elcapinyoazz
Social climber
Joshua Tree
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Jun 28, 2012 - 03:13pm PT
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Silver, nice attitude: I don't know that I'm full of sh#t, and even if I am nanananananana I CAN'T HEAR YOU, because politicians bad mkay.
Instead of parroting propaganda, how about actually investigating your own claims? Pretty simple in the internet age.
"The quote commonly attributed to American socialist Norman Mattoon Thomas, that America would eventually unknowingly adopt socialism "under the name of 'liberalism,'" is often cited in U.S. political debates. It gained renewed currency beginning in late 2008, in conjunction with the presidential candidacy of Barack Obama (whom political opponents labeled a "socialist") and his subsequent efforts in mid-2009 to enact health care reform in the U.S. (characterized by critics as "socialized medicine"). A connection between the putative Norman Thomas quote and universal health care was established much earlier, however: in 1961, Ronald Reagan then still an actor who had not yet embarked upon a political career cited the words attributed to Thomas during a talk he gave on the perils of socialized medicine.
But did Thomas ever make this statement? Although these words have been attributed to him for several decades, apparently no one has ever been able to turn up a source documenting that he actually said (or wrote) them, in 1944 or at any other time. In 2003, for example, Reagan biographer Lou Cannon noted that:
[Reagan's] assertion that the United States was sliding into socialism by degrees [was] a notion fashionable among conservatives in the 1960s. Reagan often used quotations or paraphrases from Karl Marx or modern socialists to make this point; a favorite line was this supposed prediction of Norman Thomas, who ran for president on the Socialist ticket for six consecutive elections through 1948: "Thomas said that the American people would never knowingly vote for socialism; but under the guise of liberalism, they would adopt every fragment of the socialist platform until one day America would be Socialist without knowing how it came about." This is a suspect quotation, and Reagan gave no reference for it.
Cannon elaborated in a footnote to this passage that:
If Thomas said this, I have been unable to find evidence of it, and Reagan told me in 1968 that he did not know its origins. Thomas often did say, however, that both major political parties had borrowed items from the Socialist Party platform, including Social Security. Reagan was vulnerable to using bogus quotes in his speeches because he clipped so many items out of newspapers in which such quotations abound. Reagan used, for instance, several variants of a fake Tocqueville saying: "America is great because America is good. And if America ever ceases to be good, America will cease being great." This bogus quote was also used by Bill Clinton and Ross Perot."
As far as we know, the closest connection yet found between Norman Thomas and the substance of the words attributed to him is something that was written to (not by) him, a 1951 letter from Upton Sinclair, the noted American author (best known for his 1906 muckraking novel The Jungle who twice (unsuccessfully) ran for Congress on the Socialist ticket and (also unsuccessfully) ran for the governorship of California as a Democrat in 1934:
The American People will take Socialism, but they won't take the label. I certainly proved it in the case of EPIC. Running on the Socialist ticket I got 60,000 votes, and running on the slogan to 'End Poverty in California' I got 879,000. I think we simply have to recognize the fact that our enemies have succeeded in spreading the Big Lie. There is no use attacking it by a front attack, it is much better to out-flank them.
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Brandon-
climber
The Granite State.
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Jun 28, 2012 - 03:13pm PT
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Bob,
My passport picture is me with long hair. I get questioned by the TSA every time I return to the states.
I love to travel internationally, and America would be a better place if more people traveled.
Sadly, many people are afraid to travel, we live in a nation of scared people.
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Ksolem
Trad climber
Monrovia, California
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Jun 28, 2012 - 03:27pm PT
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So you may be a lover of technology and what it does, but I am a skeptic, and always will be.
Ken you keep putting words in my mouth.
The great majority of my personal health care is not coming from technology. Rather I practice meditation, Yoga and Pilates. I am a Pilates teacher - not a trivial thing but two years in training. I walk a lot. I climb a fair amount. I eat in a manner which works very positively for me. I am 5'9" tall and weigh 145. Physical activity is my mantra.
Yes, a high tech intervention saved me, but I attribute much of the remarkable recovery I have enjoyed to these activities.
I too am skeptical about high tech healthcare solutions, since most of the people out there in trouble could fix themselves by controlling what they put in their face. However, when faced with a situation where the only way out is the latest technology, you would make the same choice I did and be grateful if you were as fortunate as I to have a good outcome.
I get your point about an individual case being a poor data point from which to design a large system. Conversely, a large system designed around a majority of cases can tend to ignore or under serve unique individual cases, of which there are many and among which climbers will tend to find themselves.
I'm still curious how you would answer my original questions.
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juar
Sport climber
socal
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Jun 28, 2012 - 03:49pm PT
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#FOXfail, #CNNfail
It was FOX News and CNN's "Dewey Defeats Truman" moment.
Reporting the Supreme Court's decision on Obama's health care law, both CNN and Fox News rushed dead-wrong headlines on-air.
Buzzfeed is reporting that CNN staffers are "on the verge of open revolt" over the network's incompetence:
“F*#king humiliating,” said one CNN veteran. “We had a chance to cover it right. And some people in here don’t get what a big deal getting it wrong is. Morons.”
“Shameful,” another long-time correspondent told BuzzFeed.
"It's outrageous and embarrassing,” a third CNN staffer vented. “Maybe this will shake the company into understanding that CNN has not been the 'most trusted name in news' for a very long time."
http://www.buzzfeed.com/mhastings/cnn-news-staffers-revolt-over-blown-coverage
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juar
Sport climber
socal
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Jun 28, 2012 - 04:01pm PT
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there tee pee on your shoe there sonny
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yosguns
climber
Durham, NC
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Jun 28, 2012 - 04:02pm PT
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Here are excerpts from the opinions.
Roberts Majority
[A]
. . .
Everyone will eventually need health care at a time and to an extent they cannot predict, but if they do not have insurance, they often will not be able to pay for it. Because state and federal laws nonetheless require hospitals to provide a certain degree of care to individuals without regard to their ability to pay, hospitals end up receiving compensation for only a portion of the services they provide. To recoup the losses, hospitals pass on the cost to insurers through higher rates, and insurers, in turn, pass on the cost to policy holders in the form of higher premiums. Congress estimated that the cost of uncompensated care raises family health insurance premiums, on average, by over $1,000 per year.
In the Affordable Care Act, Congress addressed the problem of those who cannot obtain insurance coverage because of preexisting conditions or other health issues. It did so through the Act’s “guaranteed-issue” and “community- rating” provisions. These provisions together prohibit insurance companies from denying coverage to those with such conditions or charging unhealthy individuals higher premiums than healthy individuals.
The guaranteed-issue and community-rating reforms do not, however, address the issue of healthy individuals who choose not to purchase insurance to cover potential healthcare needs. In fact, the reforms sharply exacerbate that problem, by providing an incentive for individuals to delay purchasing health insurance until they become sick, relying on the promise of guaranteed and affordable coverage.
The reforms also threaten to impose massive new costs on insurers, who are required to accept unhealthy individuals but prohibited from charging them rates necessary to pay for their coverage. This will lead insurers to significantly increase premiums on everyone.
The individual mandate was Congress’s solution to these problems. By requiring that individuals purchase health insurance, the mandate prevents cost-shifting by those who would otherwise go without it. In addition, the mandate forces into the insurance risk pool more healthy individuals, whose premiums on average will be higher than their health care expenses. This allows insurers to subsidize the costs of covering the unhealthy individuals the reforms require them to accept.
. . .
The individual mandate, however, does not regulate existing commercial activity. It instead compels individuals to become active in commerce by purchasing a product, on the ground that their failure to do so affects interstate commerce. Construing the Commerce Clause to permit Congress to regulate individuals precisely because they are doing nothing would open a new and potentially vast domain to congressional authority. Every day individuals do not do an infinite number of things. In some cases they decide not to do something; in others they simply fail to do it. Allowing Congress to justify federal regulation by pointing to the effect of inaction on commerce would bring countless decisions an individual could potentially make within the scope of federal regulation, and—under the Government’s theory—empower Congress to make those decisions for him.
. . .
Indeed, the Government’s logic would justify a mandatory purchase to solve almost any problem. To consider a different example in the health care market, many Americans do not eat a balanced diet. That group makes up a larger percentage of the total population than those without health insurance. See, e.g., Dept. of Agriculture and Dept. of Health and Human Services, Dietary Guidelines for Americans 1 (2010). The failure of that group to have a healthy diet increases health care costs, to a greater extent than the failure of the uninsured to purchase insurance. See, e.g., Finkelstein, Trogdon, Cohen, & Dietz, Annual Medical Spending Attributable to Obesity: Payer- and Service-Specific Estimates, 28 Health Affairs 822 (2009) (detailing the “undeniable link between rising rates of obesity and rising medical spending,” and estimating that “the annual medical burden of obesity has risen to almost 10 percent of all medical spending and could amount to $147 billion per year in 2008”). Those increased costs are borne in part by other Americans who must pay more, just as the uninsured shift costs to the insured. See Center for Applied Ethics, Voluntary Health Risks: Who Should Pay?, 6 Issues in Ethics 6 (1993) (noting “overwhelming evidence that individuals with unhealthy habits pay only a fraction of the costs associated with their behaviors; most of the expense is borne by the rest of society in the form of higher insurance premiums, government expenditures for health care, and disability benefits”). Congress addressed the insurance problem by ordering everyone to buy insurance. Under the Government’s theory, Congress could address the diet problem by ordering everyone to buy vegetables.
People, for reasons of their own, often fail to do things that would be good for them or good for society. Those failures—joined with the similar failures of others—can readily have a substantial effect on interstate commerce. Under the Government’s logic, that authorizes Congress to use its commerce power to compel citizens to act as the Government would have them act.
That is not the country the Framers of our Constitution envisioned. James Madison explained that the Commerce Clause was “an addition which few oppose and from which no apprehensions are entertained.” The Federalist No. 45, at 293. While Congress’s authority under the Commerce Clause has of course expanded with the growth of the national economy, our cases have “always recognized that the power to regulate commerce, though broad indeed, has limits.” Maryland v. Wirtz (1968). The Government’s theory would erode those limits, permitting Congress to reach beyond the natural extent of its authority, “everywhere extending the sphere of its activity and drawing all power into its impetuous vortex.” The Federalist No. 48, at 309 (J. Madison). Congress already enjoys vast power to regulate much of what we do. Accepting the Government’s theory would give Congress the same license to regulate what we do not do, fundamentally changing the relation between the citizen and the Federal Government.6
. . .
[ B ]
That is not the end of the matter. Because the Commerce Clause does not support the individual mandate, it is necessary to turn to the Government’s second argument: that the mandate may be upheld as within Congress’s enumerated power to “lay and collect Taxes.” Art. I, §8, cl. 1.
The Government’s tax power argument asks us to view the statute differently than we did in considering its commerce power theory. In making its Commerce Clause argument, the Government defended the mandate as a regulation requiring individuals to purchase health insurance. The Government does not claim that the taxing power allows Congress to issue such a command. Instead, the Government asks us to read the mandate not as ordering individuals to buy insurance, but rather as imposing a tax on those who do not buy that product.
. . .
The most straightforward reading of the mandate is that it commands individuals to purchase insurance. After all, it states that individuals “shall” maintain health insurance. Congress thought it could enact such a command under the Commerce Clause, and the Government primarily defended the law on that basis. But, for the reasons explained above, the Commerce Clause does not give Congress that power. Under our precedent, it is therefore necessary to ask whether the Government’s alternative reading of the statute—that it only imposes a tax on those without insurance—is a reasonable one.
Under the mandate, if an individual does not maintain health insurance, the only consequence is that he must make an additional payment to the IRS when he pays his taxes. That, according to the Government, means the mandate can be regarded as establishing a condition—not owning health insurance—that triggers a tax—the required payment to the IRS. Under that theory, the mandate is not a legal command to buy insurance. Rather, it makes going without insurance just another thing the Government taxes, like buying gasoline or earning income. And if the mandate is in effect just a tax hike on certain taxpayers who do not have health insurance, it may be within Congress’s constitutional power to tax.
The question is not whether that is the most natural interpretation of the mandate, but only whether it is a “fairly possible” one. Crowell v. Benson (1932). As we have explained, “every reasonable construction must be resorted to, in order to save a statute from unconstitutionality.” Hooper v. California (1895). The Government asks us to interpret the mandate as imposing a tax, if it would otherwise violate the Constitution. Granting the Act the full measure of deference owed to federal statutes, it can be so read, for the reasons set forth below.
[C]
The exaction the Affordable Care Act imposes on those without health insurance looks like a tax in many respects. The “[s]hared responsibility payment,” as the statute entitles it, is paid into the Treasury by “taxpayer[s]” when they file their tax returns. It does not apply to individuals who do not pay federal income taxes because their household income is less than the filing threshold in the Internal Revenue Code. For taxpayers who do owe the payment, its amount is determined by such familiar factors as taxable income, number of dependents, and joint filing status. The requirement to pay is found in the Internal Revenue Code and enforced by the IRS, which—as we previously explained—must assess and collect it “in the same manner as taxes.” This process yields the essential feature of any tax:it produces at least some revenue for the Government. United States v. Kahriger (1953). Indeed, the payment is expected to raise about $4 billion per year by 2017.
. . .
. . . [T]he shared responsibility payment may for constitutional purposes be considered a tax, not a penalty: First, for most Americans the amount due will be far less than the price of insurance, and, by statute, it can never be more.8 It may often be a reasonable financial decision to make the payment rather than purchase insurance, unlike the “prohibitory” financial punishment in Drexel Furniture. 259 U. S., at 37. Second, the individual mandate contains no scienter requirement. Third, the payment is collected solely by the IRS through the normal means of taxation—except that the Service is not allowed to use those means most suggestive of a punitive sanction, such as criminal prosecution. The reasons the Court in Drexel Furniture held that what was called a “tax” there was a penalty support the conclusion that what is called a “penalty” here may be viewed as a tax.9
None of this is to say that the payment is not intended to affect individual conduct. Although the payment will raise considerable revenue, it is plainly designed to expand health insurance coverage. But taxes that seek to influence conduct are nothing new. Some of our earliest federal taxes sought to deter the purchase of imported manufactured goods in order to foster the growth of domestic industry. Today, federal and state taxes can compose more than half the retail price of cigarettes, not just to raise more money, but to encourage people to quit smoking. And we have upheld such obviously regulatory measures as taxes on selling marijuana and sawed-off shotguns. See United States v. Sanchez (1950); Sonzinsky v. United States (1937). Indeed, “[e]very tax is in some measure regulatory. To some extent it interposes an economic impediment to the activity taxed as compared with others not taxed.” Sonzinsky. That §5000A seeks to shape decisions about whether to buy health insurance does not mean that it cannot be a valid exercise of the taxing power.
. . . While the individual mandate clearly aims to induce the purchase of health insurance, it need not be read to declare that failing to do so is unlawful. Neither the Act nor any other law attaches negative legal consequences to not buying health insurance, beyond requiring a payment to the IRS. The Government agrees with that reading, confirming that if someone chooses to pay rather than obtain health insurance, they have fully complied with the law.
Indeed, it is estimated that four million people each year will choose to pay the IRS rather than buy insurance. We would expect Congress to be troubled by that prospect if such conduct were unlawful. That Congress apparently regards such extensive failure to comply with the mandate as tolerable suggests that Congress did not think it was creating four million outlaws. It suggests instead that the shared responsibility payment merely imposes a tax citizens may lawfully choose to pay in lieu of buying health insurance.
. . .
Ginbsurg Dissent
. . . I would hold, alternatively, that the Commerce Clause authorizes Congress to enact the minimum coverage provision. . . .
. . .
[A]
. . .
. . . As a group, uninsured individuals annually consume more than $100 billion in health- care services, nearly 5% of the Nation’s total. Hidden Health Tax: Americans Pay a Premium 2 (2009), avail- able at http : //www.familiesusa.org. . . .
[ B ]
. . . Unlike markets for most products, however, the inability to pay for care does not mean that an uninsured individual will receive no care. Federal and state law, as well as professional obligations and embedded social norms, require hospitals and physicians to provide care when it is most needed, regardless of the patient’s ability to pay.
. . .
As a consequence, medical-care providers deliver sig-nificant amounts of care to the uninsured for which the providers receive no payment. In 2008, for example, hospi-tals, physicians, and other health-care professionals received no compensation for $43 billion worth of the $116 billion in care they administered to those without insurance.
**Health-care providers do not absorb these bad debts. Instead, they raise their prices, passing along the cost of uncompensated care to those who do pay reliably: the government and private insurance companies. In response, private insurers increase their premiums, shifting the cost of the elevated bills from providers onto those who carry insurance. The net result: Those with health insurance subsidize the medical care of those without it. As economists would describe what happens, the uninsured “free ride” on those who pay for health insurance.
The size of this subsidy is considerable. Congress found that the cost-shifting just described “increases family [insurance] premiums by on average over $1,000 a year.”** Ibid. Higher premiums, in turn, render health insurance less affordable, forcing more people to go without insurance and leading to further cost-shifting.
[C]
States cannot resolve the problem of the uninsured on their own. Like Social Security benefits, a universal health-care system, if adopted by an individual State,would be “bait to the needy and dependent elsewhere, encouraging them to migrate and seek a haven of repose.” Helvering v. Davis (1937). See also Brief for Commonwealth of Massachusetts as Amicus Curiae (noting that, in 2009, Massachusetts’ emergency rooms served thousands of uninsured, out-of-state residents). An influx of unhealthy individuals into a State with universal health care would result in increased spending on medical services. To cover the increased costs, a State would have to raise taxes, and private health-insurance companies would have to increase premiums. Higher taxes and increased insurance costs would, in turn, encourage businesses and healthy individuals to leave the State.
States that undertake health-care reforms on their own thus risk “placing themselves in a position of economic disadvantage as compared with neighbors or competitors.” Davis. See also Brief for Health Care for All, Inc., et al. as Amici Curiae (“[O]ut-of-state residents continue to seek and receive millions of dollars in uncompensated care in Massachusetts hospitals, limiting the State’s efforts to improve its health care system through the elimination of uncompensated care.”). Facing that risk, individual States are unlikely to take the initiative in addressing the problem of the uninsured, even though solving that problem is in all States’ best interests. Congress’ intervention was needed to overcome this collective action impasse.
[D]
Aware that a national solution was required, Congress could have taken over the health-insurance market by establishing a tax-and-spend federal program like Social Security. Such a program, commonly referred to as a single-payer system (where the sole payer is the Federal Government), would have left little, if any, room for private enterprise or the States. Instead of going this route, Congress enacted the ACA, a solution that retains a robust role for private insurers and state governments. To make its chosen approach work, however, Congress had to use some new tools, including a requirement that most individuals obtain private health insurance coverage. As explained below, by employing these tools, Congress was able to achieve a practical, altogether reasonable, solution.
. . .
In sum, Congress passed the minimum coverage provision as a key component of the ACA to address an economic and social problem that has plagued the Nation for decades: the large number of U. S. residents who are unable or unwilling to obtain health insurance. Whatever one thinks of the policy decision Congress made, it was Congress’ prerogative to make it. Reviewed with appropriate deference, the minimum coverage provision, allied to the guaranteed-issue and community-rating prescriptions, should survive measurement under the Commerce and Necessary and Proper Clauses.
. . .
[2]
. . .
Underlying THE CHIEF JUSTICE’s view that the Commerce Clause must be confined to the regulation of active participants in a commercial market is a fear that the commerce power would otherwise know no limits. See, e.g., ante, at 23 (Allowing Congress to compel an individ-ual not engaged in commerce to purchase a product would “permi[t] Congress to reach beyond the natural extent of its authority, everywhere extending the sphere of its activity, and drawing all power into its impetuous vortex.”(internal quotation marks omitted)). The joint dissenters express a similar apprehension. See post, at 8 (If the minimum coverage provision is upheld under the commerce power then “the Commerce Clause becomes a font of unlimited power, . . . the hideous monster whose devouring jaws . . . spare neither sex nor age, nor high nor low,nor sacred nor profane.” (internal quotation marks omitted)). This concern is unfounded.
First, THE CHIEF JUSTICE could certainly uphold the individual mandate without giving Congress carte blanche to enact any and all purchase mandates. As several times noted, the unique attributes of the health-care market render everyone active in that market and give rise to a significant free-riding problem that does not occur in other markets.
Nor would the commerce power be unbridled, absent THE CHIEF JUSTICE’s “activity” limitation. Congress would remain unable to regulate noneconomic conduct that has only an attenuated effect on interstate commerce and is traditionally left to state law. In Lopez, for example, the Court held that the Federal Government lacked power, under the Commerce Clause, to criminalize the possession of a gun in a local school zone. Possessing a gun near a school, the Court reasoned, “is in no sense an economic activity that might, through repetition elsewhere, substantially affect any sort of interstate commerce.” . . .
An individual’s decision to self-insure, I have explained, is an economic act with the requisite connection to interstate commerce. Other choices individuals make are unlikely to fit the same or similar description. As an example of the type of regulation he fears, THE CHIEF JUSTICE cites a Government mandate to purchase green vegetables. One could call this concern “the broccoli horrible.” Congress, THE CHIEF JUSTICE posits, might adopt such a mandate, reasoning that an individual’s failure to eat a healthy diet, like the failure to purchase health insurance, imposes costs on others.
Consider the chain of inferences the Court would have to accept to conclude that a vegetable-purchase mandate was likely to have a substantial effect on the health-care costs borne by lithe Americans. The Court would have to believe that individuals forced to buy vegetables would then eat them (instead of throwing or giving them away), would prepare the vegetables in a healthy way (steamed or raw, not deep-fried), would cut back on unhealthy foods, and would not allow other factors (such as lack of exercise or little sleep) to trump the improved diet.9 . . .
Other provisions of the Constitution also check congressional overreaching. A mandate to purchase a particu-lar product would be unconstitutional if, for example, the edict impermissibly abridged the freedom of speech, interfered with the free exercise of religion, or infringed on a liberty interest protected by the Due Process Clause.
. . .
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apogee
climber
Technically expert, safe belayer, can lead if easy
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Jun 28, 2012 - 04:09pm PT
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fattrad, even if you post that line three times in two threads, it doesn't mean it ever actually happened.
Idiot.
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looking sketchy there...
Social climber
Latitute 33
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Jun 28, 2012 - 04:21pm PT
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Sorry to have been away. Just finished discussing the termination of the company health insurance plan of my office partner. He has nine employees, no reason for him to keep it with the ACA and he'll save thousands each month.
LOL
The Federal Gov. actually subsidizes Employer provided insurance coverage (its tax deductible by employer and not taxed to the employee). There is a calculus of (and often organized negotiating) benefits.
Employers provide coverage to attract employees and to be competitive. Employees want the benefits because coverage is guaranteed and it not taxed to them.
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