With the second day of oral arguments being heard in the Supreme Court regarding the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, I thought it would be timely to put up a post with my various thoughts on the issue.
First of all, today is the key day as they are discussing the issue of the mandate. I'm wondering the team that is arguing to uphold the law as is will look to this bill, enacted in 1798 by the 5th Congress and signed by founding father John Adams, as an example of how the government can more or less force people to get health care. An Act For The Relief of Sick and Disabled Seamen would never pass muster with the Republicans of today. Clearly they would label it as "government overreach" and "something our founding fathers would never do"...even though our founding fathers did just that!
The type of question that each justice asks is usually indicative of how they are going to vote. I think it's safe to say that Thomas and Alito will be voting to strike down the mandate. Scalia is likely to vote that way as well, although there is some early indication that he doesn't like to mess around with bills that Congress have already passed. With Kagan, Sotomayor, Ginsberg and Breyer likely to support the bill, that leaves Roberts and Kennedy and I think it's very possible that each will support to uphold the law as is given the other precedents that are being introduced.
PolitiFact has a page up that lists all the misconceptions about the health care law which have, no doubt, helped drive up its disapproval rating to around 47 percent. Here's the one that most people believe but is, in fact, a "Pants on Fire" lie.
Chris Christie slams health care reform as “a government takeover of health care”
While the reform gives the federal government a larger role in the health insurance industry, it doesn’t eliminate the private market. In fact, the reform is projected to increase the number of citizens with private health insurance.
We know Christie doesn’t like the national health care reform, but he should know better than to call it a "government takeover." That’s been proven wrong over and over again, making his claim simply ridiculous.
Yeah, well, never touch a man's paranoia. It's a sacred thing.
The outcome of their ruling is going to be very interesting. How much will it affect the president's chances of re-election?
6 comments:
Funny how no one but you thinks that that 1798 act is relevant. Does that tell you anything?
When MoJo is sweatin', you shouldn't be so sanguine. Not to mention the NYT.
Really? You think Thomas' questions were indicative? Which questions were those exactly? I'm most interested because Thomas has yet to open his mouth during oral arguments.
Perhaps you just regurgitated something somebody else said. Like you recently admitted to plagarizing Rolling Stone, and passing it off as your own.
Perhaps you are incapable of forming your own opinion.
Politifact:
Now, let’s explain how the private market remains intact under the health care reform.
It’s true that the national reform imposes more government regulations for individuals, employers and private insurance companies...
But despite those and other additional regulations, the private health insurance industry remains intact under the reform...
the reform allows for a larger federal presence in health insurance regulation, but not a takeover of the market....
Compare that to this:
To the proposition that businesses were private property in name but not in substance, in The Journal of Economic History article "The Role of Private Property in the Nazi Economy: The Case of Industry", Christoph Buchheim and Jonas Scherner counter that despite state control, business had much production and investment planning freedom — while the economy was still to a larger degree politically controlled it "does not necessarily mean that private property of enterprises was not of any significance [...] For despite extensive regulatory activity by an interventionist public administration, firms preserved a good deal of their autonomy even under the Nazi regime", a system which they term "command-capitalism"
We've seen this before.....
See my post today, folks, for a follow up.
Guard Duck, c'mon, really?
Yeah really Mark.
The Italians called it the a third way (Italian terza via), a real alternative to both capitalism and free competition (laissez-faire), and the planned socialist economy (in their terminology - communism).
the government has a strong control action, effectively controlling the production and distribution of resources.
the fascist states developed on the basis of private property and of private initiative, but it was subordinated to the tasks of the state
So if you are telling a private business who they will sell to, at what price and how they are to go about actually doing their business - well, that pretty much sounds like a government take over of the industry doesn't it?
Haven't you been all about the 'government being more efficient in the allocation of resources in the health care market'? Haven't you advocated that private enterprise still 'needs' to be involved to 'keep' initiative in the market? Aren't you then advocating a 'third way'?
Yeah, we've seen this before.
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