"And young, healthy people who need less care (and maybe/probably have low-paying jobs) will be subsidizing older people. Somebody has to pay. Why not them?!"

But that's always been the case with insurance hasn't it? People that don't need it subsidize people that do need it, because one day, well you might need it.

And isn't that what you've written about repeatedly over the years? You paid for insurance since you were in your 20s, and you don't want to pay for people that don't pay for insurance.

And you're already paying these "free loaders" health care costs anyway, in the form of medicaid to the poor or disabled, in the form of paying for ER services for folks that just head to the ER since they can't afford a doctor and the ER can't turn them away, and in the form of higher rates at hospitals and doctors as they charge you/us for people that default on their bills?

And old people pay for young people's schools, roadway improvements, national parks, libraries and other resources the elderly will mostly not use, how is that different from asking young people to subsidize old people's health care costs should that happen?

Note: I am not saying anything about whether the cost projections were right or wrong, or if the President misled, was naive, or outright lied about the projected costs.

So fine, kill every single health insurance company, the Constitution does not protect any industry. Stop calling it health insurance, call it National Health Benefits, a pre-paid plan that covers Americans from birth to death, paid for by taxes.

Apparently that would be completely legal (and justifiable as far as I am concerned) and would show the fallacy of the argument that "oh, you are forcing young people to subsidize the rich", yes, that is what taxes and insurance does. So?

So fine, kill every single health insurance company, the Constitution does not protect any industry. Stop calling it health insurance, call it National Health Benefits, a pre-paid plan that covers Americans from birth to death, paid for by taxes.

I agree with your first sentence. After that, all I can say is show me in the Constitution where the Federal Government is Authorized to do as you suggest.

Here's the text of the 9th Amendment:

The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

and the 10th:

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

Remember, the Constitution spells out what the Federal Government must or may do, and that is all that it may do. Obama complains that his hands are tied by the Constitution, which is correct. It was intended that way.

George Washington likened government to fire: a potential useful force, but also a dangerous foe.

I'm certainly no tax or law expert -- is there a difference between using taxes to pay for a national health benefit and using taxes to pay for national parks, or for Americorp, or any of the other things we pay taxes for?

I'm certainly no tax or law expert -- is there a difference between using taxes to pay for a national health benefit and using taxes to pay for national parks, or for Americorp, or any of the other things we pay taxes for?

Posted by: jerry at June 5, 2013 3:54 PM

Not really, But in this case the problem is not the result, it is the way the administration went about it. They were so desperate to pass it, that they could not label it a tax, so they called it penalty and argued it was valid under the commerce clause.

Chief Justice Roberts ruled that it was a tax, and there is still a lot of litigation working its way through the courts. Congress can stop it by refusing to fund the implementation. It might be easier to do this than to repeal it. Much depends on the midterm elections.

Maybe this needs to be in bold.

Why is anyone so insanely stupid that they think government involvement can make anything cheaper?

The ultimate in wishful thinking, that's what this is.

Health-care networks are required by law to enumerate the costs to the participant. Yes, even my Federal contractor, with what is called a "Cadillac" plan, is detailing higher overall costs to pay for Federal oversight - which will not, in any case, be accountable to the people it supposedly serves.

Costs, overall, not just to me.

I'm certainly no tax or law expert -- is there a difference between using taxes to pay for a national health benefit and using taxes to pay for national parks, or for Americorp, or any of the other things we pay taxes for?

Posted by: jerry at June 5, 2013 3:54 PM

Go read the Constitution and the bill of rights. Specifically the concepts of taxes based on enumeration (all pay the same tax) and the 16th ammendment. The only reason the Feds can collect income taxes is due to the 16th ammendment. Roberts et. al are WRONG. If its a tax, then it is unconstitutional. CONgress would have to pass an ammendment to tax you for healthcare. Obamacare is MAKING you pay for healthcare "insurance". It is outright SLAVERY.

I'm certainly no tax or law expert -- is there a difference between using taxes to pay for a national health benefit and using taxes to pay for national parks, or for Americorp, or any of the other things we pay taxes for? -- jerry at June 5, 2013 3:54 PM

You have some prior posts that indicate that you are very left leaning and think that the we need to ask the government for permission. I'm going to try to step back and assume this is an honest question. I'm going to use the U.S. Constitution Online as my reference document. Sometimes reading the Things That Are Not In the U.S. Constitution is actually a better start to answer your questions.

The way the founding fathers wrote the Constitution and the Bill of Rights is that the individual could do whatever until it infringed on someone else. The other thing that they were trying to do is set it up so that laws were written as close to the individual as possible.

So they wanted the cities, towns and villages writing most of the laws with the exception of Article I, Section 8, Clause 3 which is the commerce clause (To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian tribes;). That was written to stop tariffs and customs charges for a furniture maker in Maine being charged ship it to Maryland by every intervening state.

This view was ruined by the Wickard V. Filburn decision that said a farmer in Ohio couldn't grow extra wheat to feed his own pigs without effecting commerce.

But even under the Wickard decision the federal government couldn't order the individual to do anything. It did allow the fed to setup agencies such as the Department of Education because the different standards for schools between states led to unbalanced commerce; the EPA because pollutants can cross state line; the Department of Transportation because the general baseline for all vehicles to had to be the same.

The 16th amendment (direct taxing authority on everyone) perverted it even more. That made everyone beholden to the IRS and the fed. The allegiance should be to your state, then to the fed.

The latest perversion is that the government is now ordering you, as a private individual, to buy health insurance.

So if I'm 21 years old, with a history of good health and no anticipation of needing to see a doctor; why should I buy health insurance especially if I'm barely above minimum wage and the plan sucks? So now the government is controlling what you do.

"You have some prior posts that indicate that you are very left leaning..."

You should avoid going there. Much more interesting and valuable to take the arguments as they come. FWIW, at left wing sites, they think I'm a right winger. At right wing sites, a left winger.

I'll tell you this, I am a left leaning mostly libertarian certainly civil libertarian who tries to keep an open mind and engage in thoughtful skepticism.

Reach back into your past when you used to have an open and thoughtful mind, remember that?

I'm familiar with the Wickard stuff, but if the gov't says free National Health Care, paid for by taxes, then Sammy ain't making you purchase nothing, same as when Sammy opens up a shiny new National Park.

But thank you for the glib stereotyping, it will help me put an Internet label on you.

I'm certainly no tax or law expert -- is there a difference between using taxes to pay for a national health benefit and using taxes to pay for national parks, or for Americorp, or any of the other things we pay taxes for? -- jerry at June 5, 2013 3:54 PM

Then let me try this again: Please show me where in the U.S. Federal Constitution that you can find the national parks, or for Americorp.

The NPS and Americorp is actually extra-Constitutional or unConstitutional already. For that matter the interstate highway system is extra-Constitutional.

So then we start the conversation on an even basis.

Making a free National Health Care system, paid for by taxes may sound like a great idea. But please show me where that is a Constitutional line item.

Thank you Jim for agreeing that a National Health Care system paid for by taxes would be no different and just as legal as the National Highway System.

Good luck with those windmills.

"...free National Health Care, paid for by taxes,..."

I can't believe you would post this and not realize what you said.

Do you really not get that this is NOT FREE?

I'm not stereotyping you at all: you simply have irrational views about the world in general and government operations in particular.

I'm so glad someone else caught the cognitive dissonance in the "free National healthcare, paid for by taxes" sentence.

Jerry, I'd rather have no healthcare at all than put the government-the people who have ruined education while skyrocketing the cost of it, as they do everything they touch-in charge of it. THAT is the hill I will die on if needs be.

Raddy, momof4,

""...free National Health Care, paid for by taxes,..."

I can't believe you would post this and not realize what you said.

Do you really not get that this is NOT FREE?"

This is not a financial equation, this is a legal equation.

And legally it seems that paying via taxes vs. paying by individual purchases makes a ton of difference. One is apparently constitutional, the other may not be. (Though the Supreme Court says both are)

https://www.google.com/search?q=constitutionality+obamacare+single+payer+versus+individual+mandate

Clearly, we would be paying for the national health system, but the question is, is it legally different from how we pay for national parks, or national highways, because the challenge was that legally we cannot ask people to make "insurance" payments or require them to purchase anything, and that may be true. But the rejoinder has been, fine, pay for it all through taxes, and make the actual visits free of charge, just as we do now everytime we use the national highway system.

@Amy, I completely agree with you about your shrink being your shrink and not a gov't shrink there to "help" you.

Momof4,

"Jerry, I'd rather have no healthcare at all than put the government-the people who have ruined education while skyrocketing the cost of it, as they do everything they touch-in charge of it."

I completely understand that sentiment although I disagree with it to the extent that the current system of insurance leads to a lot of people (myself included) that would either love to purchase insurance but are kicked out for very little reason, or are trapped in jobs they hate because that is the only way to obtain insurance.

And I'm not talking about everyone here's favorite kick me dog, eating sugar (or smoking), my issue was one of a birth defect that 1 - 2% of all Americans have. (Including Arnold).

Since the current system has failed and since the main players in it seem well, pretty damn evil if you ask me, I am okay with experimentation to get us to a different place.

I think there are some real issues to be asked and dealt with, including issues surrounding Amy's "gov't paid" psychiatrist, but there are also a lot of distracting, red herrings issues like "it's unconstitutional to force (young) people to buy medical insurance" which was not only answered by the Court but answered by even conservative opponents of Obamacare over at the Volokh Conspiracy, the same blog that pretty much forced the SCOTUS to review Obamacare.

So if you dislike Obamacare, it might be better to focus on what the important issues are and where the actual battles will be fought.

If you die on that hill, it will probably be of exposure, loneliness, and starvation, because the legal experts think the actual battle will be a few miles away, on a completely different hill. Focus on that hill.

You let it be a different battle ground because you let special interests move it.

You even approve - of a system that moves more and more dollars away from the patient.

You won't contribute to a charity that skims money from the needy, but you'll back a government sucking up dollars everywhere.

So, we're putting in a system that doesn't recognize the most basic fact about medical care: unless doctors are paid to see patients, all the best intentions on the planet and all the "legal" definitions have no basis whatsoever.

You try to define Pi = 3, you lose, period.

jerry --

Don't miss the point of this thread:

Health Care Cost Lies

By the President, no less. Doesn't that feel good?

"just as we do now everytime we use the national highway system"

This is so incorrect, it is almost cringe worthy.

Federal and state highways systems are funded primarily through fuel taxes, in other words: The owners and users of vehicles that drive on those roads, Not through income taxes.

This is why the roads are so shitty in places like New York and California. Much of their highway money gets siphoned off into graft.

"You let it be a different battle ground because you let special interests move it."

I didn't let anything happen, the Supreme Court said it was legal. Pretty much end of story.

"Lies

By the President, no less. Doesn't that feel good?"

I am shocked, shocked to discover that politicians lie.

"You won't contribute to a charity that skims money from the needy, but you'll back a government sucking up dollars everywhere."

The current sons of bitches are sons of bitches. I say fuck them.

Will a government program have problems? Almost certainly, and yet around the world, countries that have single payer rank in the highest economies, medical care and satisfaction.

If instead of just trying to derail programs "the loyal opposition" worked to improve them, I am optimistic enough to think we would have had better programs.

In the meantime, yeah, fuck you, and I say that though I love you bro, but I say fuck you, because I can't get health insurance now though I would love to do just that. So fuck you and fuck your selfishness and fuck your total lack of empathy and sympathy to people that through absolutely no fault of their own, can't get the insurance needed to pay for the treatments to keep them alive as you revel in your various health care plans.

I mean seriously if you can't understand why people that have told you repeatedly they would get insurance if they could, but they can't and it's due to a birth defect would want a different system then you're seriously fucked in the head.

When you unfuck yourself, when you and the various libertarians and conservatives here can wrap your heads around other people wanting a bit of medical care without the knowledge that getting medical care will likely bankrupt them, THEN you will start coming up with reform plans that are superior to Obamacare.

The reason you lose and lose and lose in the Obamacare argument is because your point of position is from the selfish I got mine fuck everyone else point of view and in 2013, the world has moved on Snidely Whiplash to where even John Roberts says, yes, it's legal.

As I asked Amy in the beginning, it's not at all clear to me what she wants. She's been saying for years that young people should insure themselves, and here is a plan that will make them do just that, so what does she actually want?

I could probably accept a RON PAUL no insurance everyone pays their own way BUT HE EXPECTS DOCTORS, HOSPITALS, AND CHARITIES TO COVER THE COSTS OF THE POOR, or I can accept a single payer plan. But this standing in the middle of the road and getting run over by the insurance company CEOs while failing to provide care for millions of Americans? That's shit.

Apparently being libertarian means I get to think about my own needs first. Your system won't provide me insurance when I would very much like it? Fuck your system, fuck you, you're done, I'm voting my own interests -- see, that's pure libertarianism.

In the meantime, yeah, fuck you, and I say that though I love you bro, but I say fuck you, because I can't get health insurance now though I would love to do just that. So fuck you and fuck your selfishness and fuck your total lack of empathy and sympathy to people that through absolutely no fault of their own, can't get the insurance needed to pay for the treatments to keep them alive as you revel in your various health care plans. -- jerry at June 6, 2013 7:15 PM

I dug back to find where you mentioned your bicuspid aortic heart valve[1] condition.

Yeah, it sucks to be you. So I did some research

Per Cleveland Clinic:

The surgeon and cardiologist share the professional fee of approximately $2,500, although typically we have a team of eight to 10 physicians (representing the fields of anesthesia, echocardiography, surgery, and cardiology) in the operating room for every procedure, in addition to nursing and technical staff. The challenge for institutions and providers, however, is that the device costs $32,500, and CMS reimbursement does not cover the cost of both the valve and the procedure in many localities. This may affect how widely the valve is eventually used.

So call it that (310,000,000 * .015) = 4,650,000 people in your position. So if 4.6M people are wanting to buy a heart valve and are willing to pay professional fees of approximately $10K to live, do you think the price on the valve would come down? But right now there is no incentive to fix the production system.

This is what happened with LASIK and lap band treatment. I remember LASIK used to be in the $10K range, but demand has dropped it down to the $2K range.

So your complaint fails on me. Why?

Because government, and insurer, external interference is causing the price for your heart valve replacement to cost three or more times what it should be.

So fuck you too if you think government is the answer.

[1] -- www.advicegoddess.com/archives/2013/06/03/government_medd_3.html

When you can't argue the facts (JimP), argue the law (jerry).