December 14, 2010

Judge calls healthcare mandate unconstitutional

Click here for the article in the Wall Street Journal.

Personally, I think this is a victory.

WHAT?! The Obamatons say.

Chill, let me explain.

The parts of the bill requiring health insurance companies to cover everybody, regardless of pre-existing conditions, still stand.

And the shittiest part-- forcing people to buy private insurance, the one part that the INSURANCE COMPANIES liked best, is facing the axe.

This kind of reminds me of the time that republicans accidentally banned straight marriage.

Victory! (for now).

And to all the Obamatons who think that this past Healthcare bill was the best idea ever, listen up:
Mandating insurance for health is different than mandating insurance for driving a car.
Anybody can choose to not drive and still go about their business.
Health Insurance, through this bill, is a requirement of being alive.
And there's only one way to choose to stop being alive-- and it makes it really difficult to go about your day. (I'm talking about suicide folks).

4 comments:

  1. Not only that, it also looks like the Medicaid expansion is still alive as well. So the two good aspects of the bill were ruled constitutional, while the shitty mandate was not. This is indeed, good news.

    However, a slight disagreement I have is on car insurance. In many areas of the country, like where I live (Southern California), not having a car significantly impairs your ability to live a normal life there. Given how sparsely spread out our population is, and the status of our public transit system (it's almost non existent), it's not really optional here. However, I get what you're trying to say, and I too was against the "Individual mandate", especially since it didn't have any real cost control measures tied to it.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I didn't say that not having a car made life easy.
    I live in a rural area. Not having a car practically prohibits your finding employment.

    However, you can still choose not to drive and remain alive.
    You cannot choose to stop living and remain alive.

    That is a key difference.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Yes I know, it's why I said "slight disagreement". It does significantly hinder your ability to live (if one can't obtain employment, they usually starve to death)

    It's interesting to see how the reform will work while keeping the pre existing condition ban in place, without an individual mandate. Without all the "healthy" populace in the same pool, I can see some problems arise pretty quickly. Of course, the mandate didn't include any real price controls anyway, so I'm not arguing this is a bad thing. If it was the same style of individual mandate as in Switzerland or Germany, I'd be all for it, but as it stood here, it was complete crap. I wonder if the pre existing discrimination ban will still be rigidly enforced, and it will be interesting to how insurance companies might cope with that (gosh, they may actually have to cut back on those CEO bonuses..)

    ReplyDelete
  4. I strongly disagree with the policy of fining poor people for not being able to afford health insurance. However, this ruling is a scary effort to eviscerate the Commerce Clause. Without a strong Commerce Clause, there is little the federal government can do to regulate corporations.

    I could see it being used to set a precedent to get rid of Social Security and Medicare. I think it could make Medicare for All impossible. Fortunately, two other courts have upheld an admittedly bad policy and many conservative legal scholars have ridiculed the ruling.

    It's a sad state of affairs when I end up hoping that a bad policy doesn't get thrown out by the courts because the legal argument for doing so is so heinous.

    ReplyDelete