should Obama's plan go through in the U.S...................

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First post on this forum, so I hope I'm able to contribute to this discussion in the right way.

Healthcare is indeed very, very costly. As an exeample: a single lungtransplant can cost up to $ 300.000,-, an heartoperation even in excess of half a million dollars. Such a bill simply can't be payed by a single patient, it has to come from some collective fund. This can be an insurance company, or the goverment. Imho it's the task of the goverment to insure it's citizens have access to proper healthcare, and this can be done in two ways: paying the hospitalbills directly from tax-income, or issueing legislation to regulate healthcare insurance. In both cases a healthy person A has to pay for the treatment of sick person B. That's called solidarity and the only way to make healthcare possible for every citizen.

I do understand not very much people on this forum will be interested in the system we (in The Netherlands) use, but let me just say every person over 18 years of age is mandatory insured for healthcare, although we are free to chose the specific insurance company. The basic premium for this mandatory insurance is set by the state and is currently about € 100,- ( $ 140,-) per person per month. Ofcourse that's a lot of money and every month I hate to see this money move from my bankaccount to that of the insurance company, but it does have some benefits.

Universal and free healthcare actually saves money in the long run, since people go to the doctor far more often if they don't have to pay for every single visit. This in turn allows an illness to be spotted and treated much earlier and this often prevents costly hospitalization or operations. 10 minutes with a general practitioner and some relatively cheap pills can prevent an heartattack and concequent hospitalization. This is also true for most other illnesses: the earlier they are spotted and the sooner treatment starts, the lower the total cost for society will be. So by making access to a doctor free of charge by paying the total healthcaresystem from the mandatory premium every person is forced to pay, the total cost of healthcare actually decreases.

This seems to me quite a good way of providing relatively cheap and universal healthcare to every citizen, independant of one's income or financial means. If I'm to believe the Dutch press this is just the idea behind Obama's new healthcare law, so to be honest I don't see why not every American is supporting this idea. Solidarity is one of the basic fundamentals on which a modern society should be founded.

I found a discussion of one dismissal here, and it doesn't support your argument:

http://www.themoralliberal.com/2011/02/ ... obamacare/

The dismissal appears to have been for failure to state a case, and was not on grounds of constitutionality. Basically, the case alleged no actual damages but only the prospect of future damages. There's a very high bar such a case, and this one didn't meet it, basically because the plaintiffs could always sue for the damages after they happen, so it's premature to sue for those damages now.

As the article points out, that court didn't rule Obamacare constitutional, as you alleged, and I suspect the other two cases were similar. They just rejected some arguments unrelated to constitutionality of the law.

Medicaid already covers the truly needy. Society's "taking care of it's (sic) own" is not the issue here. Government's making decisions for people because of the assumption that the average person is incompetent is the issue. If you haven't been in those peoples' position, you shouldn't make assumptions about whether their decisions were the right decisions.


I used to believe this argument. The actual numbers, however, don't support this. The costs for emergency care are a lower percentage of total costs than the percentage of the population without health insurance. It seems that either the U.S. is very bad at providing cost effective preventive care, or preventive care isn't what it's cracked up to be.


This is not true for the U.S. Typically the pills prescribed for heart attack risk here are extremely expensive pills due to patent protection. Nor do they do that great a job at protecting people from heart attacks. There may be a difference between the U.S. and Holland here, as the U.S. has better patent protection which may support higher drug prices, but if we weakened the patent protection the drugs wouldn't be developed in the first place - not only would we not benefit from them, but you wouldn't either.

The truth is, the most cost effective prevention tends to be diet and lifestyle changes that the modern medical establishment largely ignores, at least in the U.S. There are things that could change that, but Obamacare doesn't address any of those things.


Perhaps that should cause you to question the Dutch press reports.

One thing you need to keep in mind that the U.S. is a federal system, and health care was previously handled mostly at the state level. Many states, including my own state of Massachusetts, already had far superior health care systems that covered a larger percentage of people than Obamacare will ever cover, and provided those people with far better coverage where Obamacare largely prohibits coverage of some basic and important procedures. How would you like it if the E.U. said you had to give up your Dutch health care system and replace it with an E.U. wide system that didn't cover half the things you need, and covered a lot fewer people to boot? That's the situation many of us are in - but it doesn't get reported in overseas press, because overseas press tends to see the U.S. as one monolithic entity, rather than as a collection of diverse states.

Well, I guess you've fully investigated it then. Don't hurt yourself now. Oh wait... Mississippi isn't one of the three cases. So we've got three cases where it's been found Constitutional and a 4th case where the right wingers were too stupid to file a proper case. You must be so proud.


DC:
http://beyondhealthcarereform.com/2011/ ... tionality/
http://www.healthcareexchange.com/blog/ ... rict-court




Michigan:
http://michiganlawyerblog.wordpress.com ... itutional/




Liberty University case:
http://www.insidebiz.com/blogs/kaufman- ... nges-ppaca




Judges Moon, Steeh, Kessler found it constitutional. Your Mississippi case was Judge Starrett. He just ruled that stupid people were wasting his time.

First the majority thinks it is unconstitutional, and even if the majority thought that way, they are a bunch of idiots then.



A fine is a criminal penalty, refusing to pay such fine you end up in jail. So really you just got caught in a lie.


The "morality" of Obamacare (which it isn't moral to begin with, it is a scam) really doesn't mean a damn thing, get that through your head, you are using a false argument. The issue is whether or not Government can penalize you for choosing not to buy a particular product, because they decide you have to buy something you don't want.

The 'oh healthcare for all' is a bogus argument and quite frankly irrelevant to the issue. The real issue is where do you draw the line, if it can be said Government can penalize someone for choosing not to participate in commerce in the first place, where does it end?

We could, of course, get rid of what you call Obamacare and still provide health care to all our citizens. We just nationalize the whole darn thing, create a Canadian system. Or a British one. Or a Dutch one. You know, do what all our allies already do.

Totally constitutional.

Pick your poison, folks. Something has to happen.

Actually, that one was also decided on the basis of the plaintiffs' failing to state a claim. See pp 44, 59, and 64 of the opinion, which are the pages granting or denying arguments of the parties.


Thanks for the links. So we now have two cases covering 1 state and 1 university ruling it constitutional, and two cases covering 27 states ruling the statute unconstitutional. That's still far from a consensus thinking that it's constitutional.

The only clearly constitutional method is to do it on a state by state level. Leave our better functioning Massachusetts system alone, and you folks in California get your act together without poisoning the rest of us.

I do agree with your metaphor of Obamacare as a poison, though.

I've noticed all the people against "Obamacare" don't owe their lives or the life of a loved one to it's passage.

They levy a fee and cannot pursue you criminally. Fines can be civil or criminal and in this case it is neither civil or criminal. They can't even do liens or seizures for the money. It's in a very specific category of it's own.

You shouldnt suggest someone is a liar without doing a little bit of research. Don't be so emotional. Do the work to inform yourself.

http://www.politifact.com/virginia/stat ... lth-care-/
http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin ... nr.txt.pdf (PAGE 131)



Bill OReilly is now on record denying that anyone at Fox said that criminal penalties or jail time were possible.



Just

Last edited by simon_says on 24 Apr 2011, 12:51 pm, edited 2 times in total.

Actually she comments at length on the Constitutionality of the law. It's a 64 page opinion.





And commentary on the decision:



You can spin it however you like. The judge took the opportunity to dismiss their arguments despite the fact that they didnt even show sufficient cause to bring the suit.

3-2 in favor. As for what happens next? I dont know. If it gets past the circuit court level it will likely be decided by Kennedy in the SC.

Quite frankly, your argument is a red-herring. It really doesn't matter if some people benefit from this law (many more are actually hurt by it, but that's a seperate issue), it is still unconstitutional as it is worded.

Can government tell you to buy auto insurance if you refuse to buy an automobile in the first place. The answer is they cannot, and that is the same reason why Obamacare is unconstitutional.

When the example of a Judge stating healthcare is a commodity was give, they kinda their entire argument. As much as Democrats want the kind of power that they can run every aspect of people's lives, the Constitution stands in their way.

The arguments over oh Obamacare helped this person or that person isn't even the issue at hand (not to mention Obamacare has actually hurt more people and most of it isn't even implimented yet so things are gonna get worse), the issue is can government penalize someone for choosing not to participate in commerce in the first place.

Also if the individual mandate is stripped out, then the insurance companies have good legal grounds for suing the Federal Government for deliberately trying to run them out of business. It is not the Job of the Judicial to rewrite a law to make it constitutional, so Obamacare is likely to be pitched, assuming no one on the Supreme Court suddenly dies (and if someone did I would suspect foul-play).

Quite frankly, you're dogmaticallya right-wing radical. It really doesn't matter if you have absolutely no background in Constitutional interpretation, or think bald assertions about a legislation's Constitutionality are somehow-obvious.

...you can be a US citizen and not own a body? Weird.

English. Do you SPEAK it?

THERE'S that McCarthy-esque paranoia we know! Welcome back.

Unlikely, since every person participates in commerce if they'd like to survive.

Poor pitiful insurance companies. At least they have their corporate jets and mistresses to keep them amused in retirement, eh?

I'm not a radical, I'm being perfectly frank with you as to why the government's power is limited as stated by the constitution.



It is what you're arguing, that we are property of the government or too stupid to be trusted to make our decisions.



Ever heard of a typo?

Should read ...they kinda destroyed their... instead of ...they kinda their entire...



I suppose in your mind, the banning of table salt in restaurants in New York is a reasonable idea...



That means it is an involuntary act, which means you're forcing someone to go about things a certain way if they want to live. If you're going that route, you just admitted the Government overstepped its authority.



Cute, however this is precisely what Democrats want. Force them out of business, create a crisis to get even more power. Thing is I doubt the insurance companies would stand for it, and it is likely (unless Obama stacks the courts with his cronies) that the insurance companies would win the lawsuit.