Crazytown, D.C.: Solicitor General On How To Avoid Health Care Mandate
If you don't like the healthcare mandate, just earn less money! Philip Klein writes at the Wash Ex:
President Obama's solicitor general, defending the national health care law on Wednesday, told a federal appeals court that Americans who didn't like the individual mandate could always avoid it by choosing to earn less money.Neal Kumar Katyal, the acting solicitor general, made the argument under questioning before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit in Cincinnati, which was considering an appeal by the Thomas More Law Center.
... "...The minimum coverage provision only kicks in after people have earned a minimum amount of income," Kaytal said. "So it's a penalty on earning a certain amount of income and self insuring. It's not just on self insuring on its own. So I guess one could say, just as the restaurant owner could depart the market in Heart of Atlanta Motel, someone doesn't need to earn that much income. I think both are kind of fanciful and I think get at..."
Sutton interjected, "That wasn't in a single speech given in Congress about this...the idea that the solution if you don't like it is make a little less money."
The so-called "hardship exemption" in the health care law is limited, and only applies to people who cannot obtain insurance for less than 8 percent of their income. So earning less isn't necessarily a solution, because it could then qualify the person for government-subsidized insurance which could make their contribution to premiums fall below the 8 percent threshold.
What if we're already earning "less money," thanks, in part, to Obama's prioritizing his health care boondoggle over the economy?
The Commerce clause of the Constitution was there to regulate trade between the states. The US was new, each state was full (as now) of greedy politicians, and this allowed the new Federal government to keep the states from levying destructive tariffs and other rules on each other which would limit trade between them.
It wasn't a rule to grant federal power to regulate your business in detail if you sell something across state lines. It was actually the opposite of that.
Roosevelt and the New Deal forced the current interpretation as a way to impose federal government control. Sell a donut across state lines? The Feds apply donut regulations on you. Buy some flour across state lines; same thing. There are rulings that choosing not to produce milk affects interstate prices, so the Feds can apply regulations on you. It is completely natural to apply the same reasoning to just sitting there being uninsured. It is entirely consistent with past rulings and the power of the Feds.
It is a bit late to wake up, blink, and say "that isn't reasonable, to regulate us just because someone might see us across a state line".
At this point, accept that you are the serf/pawn of the government, "for your own good". You have the choice of electing whomever you wish, but they get dictatorial power over you until you elect the next one.
Understand your natural rights. Think hard about what you want the country to be like for your children and for you as you get older. Demand that the Constitution be changed to make its limitations binding, and correct some of the idiotic rulings which prevent free people from asking each other questions and trading with each other.
Russians and Nigerians (for example) are not overall less intelligent, less hard working, or less concerned about their lives than we in the US. They lack a tradition of freedom and they have dictatorial government. We in the US can become much more like them. All we need is the right sort of government, the sort we are seeing implemented right now.
Andrew_M_Garland at June 6, 2011 2:35 PM
"...the solution if you don't like it is make a little less money."
So in other words, be less productive and force others who choose to continue to be productive to subsidize you.
People like this, who espouse this anti-American mindset, lie beneath my deepest contempt.
cpabroker at June 6, 2011 6:28 PM
the solution, if you don't like it is to vote for those who will repeal it.
MarkD at June 6, 2011 6:44 PM
The solution to our health care is for more people to be able to self insure. If the entire nation was more prosperous, instead of a few people on the East and West coast, we'd never be in this disaster to begin.
When will people stop believing that "stealing from the rich to give to the poor," is still stealing?
Cat at June 6, 2011 9:12 PM
I agree with your first paragraph Cat, but strongly disagree with the second.
Stealing from someone who has a lot, is indeed still stealing.
Robert at June 7, 2011 8:50 AM
Cat, I hoped you just phrased that badly, because stealing from anyone is stealing, whether they're rich or poor.
Secondly, I object because it perpetuates the fallacy that healthcare will be subsidized by the very richest, and in our minds we justify this by thinking "they can afford it easily" - whereas the reality is that the costs of this are primarily being borne by the struggling shrinking American middle-class, the millions of ordinary folk who are not living in poverty, but still struggling to pay their mortgage, keep their jobs, and save a little so their kids can go to college. You are not plundering "the rich", you are plundering the childrens college savings fund of your neighbor.
Lobster at June 8, 2011 2:35 AM
"the solution, if you don't like it is to vote for those who will repeal it."
No society in the history of mankind has ever voted itself out of slavery.
damaged justice at June 8, 2011 7:20 AM
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