Health Care Mandate

Three days of hearings by the Supreme Court will decide the fate of ObamaCare. Is it constitutional? Can the federal government force me to buy health insurance?

My first reaction is outrage. Why should I have to be forced to buy something that's so good for me?

And then I remembered: I wasn't given a choice about buying auto insurance either, even though the government didn't coerce me into buying my car. Is auto insurance regulated by the Commerce Clause as well?

The bottom line for me is whether ObamaCare will work. I have my doubts. I believe the Affordable Care Act will cost too much, both in terms of money and quality of care. But this is easy for me to say. I am not a member of the uninsured.

 
hdavid57:
Three days of hearings by the Supreme Court will decide the fate of ObamaCare. Is it constitutional? Can the federal government force me to buy health insurance?

My first reaction is outrage. Why should I have to be forced to buy something that's so good for me?

And then I remembered: I wasn't given a choice about buying auto insurance either, even though the government didn't coerce me into buying my car. Is auto insurance regulated by the Commerce Clause as well?

The bottom line for me is whether ObamaCare will work. I have my doubts. I believe the Affordable Care Act will cost too much, both in terms of money and quality of care. But this is easy for me to say. I am not a member of the uninsured.

The commerce clause allows congress to regulate interstate commerce hence with the necessary and proper clause they have the authority

 
Best Response
blastoise:
hdavid57:
Three days of hearings by the Supreme Court will decide the fate of ObamaCare. Is it constitutional? Can the federal government force me to buy health insurance?

My first reaction is outrage. Why should I have to be forced to buy something that's so good for me?

And then I remembered: I wasn't given a choice about buying auto insurance either, even though the government didn't coerce me into buying my car. Is auto insurance regulated by the Commerce Clause as well?

The bottom line for me is whether ObamaCare will work. I have my doubts. I believe the Affordable Care Act will cost too much, both in terms of money and quality of care. But this is easy for me to say. I am not a member of the uninsured.

The commerce clause allows congress to regulate interstate commerce hence with the necessary and proper clause they have the authority

...not sure if you're trolling or serious, but medical billing is a mess and the government could easily step in on a constitutional basis if the political will existed. The staff and technology are in place, it's just a question of who pays for what, and how.

Personally, I want to see tax credits for people that take care of their health.

Get busy living
 
hdavid57:
Three days of hearings by the Supreme Court will decide the fate of ObamaCare. Is it constitutional? Can the federal government force me to buy health insurance?

My first reaction is outrage. Why should I have to be forced to buy something that's so good for me?

And then I remembered: I wasn't given a choice about buying auto insurance either, even though the government didn't coerce me into buying my car. Is auto insurance regulated by the Commerce Clause as well?

The bottom line for me is whether ObamaCare will work. I have my doubts. I believe the Affordable Care Act will cost too much, both in terms of money and quality of care. But this is easy for me to say. I am not a member of the uninsured.

You are not forced to buy car insurance. You only need it if you are going to drive on public roads and own a car. So in essence, you can opt out of car insurance by not owning a car.

Obama should have just called this a tax and he wouldn't have these issues. Instead he went with the path of least political resistance and now it has a good chance of being shot down. It IS a tax, just in a different name.

 

Just playing devil's advocate to get a better understanding of how you see this:

ANT:
you can opt out of car insurance by not owning a car.
...you can't opt out of having medical expenses 100%, but without insurance the larger system will have to pay for the uninsured individual. How do you account for that?

Example: I see uninsured people in the town next to me (very poor) constantly going into the emergency room for non emergencies simply because they have no other option. The hospital would do better financially to either cut them off (not going to happen) or just provide some basic insurance plan and then they would come out ahead financially...or at least not be getting hit with the huge waste of having someone show up to the ER for something trivial like the flu. Instead, the current system is extremely wasteful and I'm not sure why anyone would want to keep it this way when it comes to those who really don't have the resources to get a very basic plan.

Again, I'm only curious what you see as the solution, I have no personal stake one way or the other. I even went for years without insurance because I didn't want it, but realized that if I didn't cover an accident that someone else would, or I would be at the mercy of some pretty unpleasant options.

Get busy living
 

Yeah, because Medicare/caid are the epitome of efficiency. Gotta love people who complain about the TSA, IRS, DMV, DoD, etc and in the same breath want the government to roll out MORE AND MORE control and authority.

No thanks.

 
ANT:
Yeah, because Medicare/caid are the epitome of efficiency. Gotta love people who complain about the TSA, IRS, DMV, DoD, etc and in the same breath want the government to roll out MORE AND MORE control and authority.

No thanks.

IN my eyes this week will reveal the direction the country is going to go. If it is found constitutional, we are farked.

 

My solution would be to focus on any number of things to lower healthcare costs before rolling out a government program or forcing people to buy insurance.

Or Obama should have simply called it a tax and there would be no Supreme Court issue.

 
txjustin:
CaliforniaAnalyst:
get rid of the social security

it's unconstitutional

I couldn't agree more. Even though I know you're being facetious, I'm being serious.

no, im serious. i'd love to have obamacare but not social securities nor unemployment benefits
 

I still don't understand why we can't expand existing programs, lean them out, and work from the existing framework. Its like we're building a car because the wheels fell off. It makes much more sense to use the existing car and fix the wheels than it does to start from zero.

If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses - Henry Ford
 

Social Security was never meant to be a national pension. Eliminate it and roll it back to what it always was, a safety net for handicapped people and widows (or people physically unable to work/extremely old).

 
CaliforniaAnalyst:
why do handicapped people and widows or people physically unable to work/extremely old should receive money to live?

The program was originally intended to be a social safety net. I want it to go back to that.

 

Yeaa! Strawmans and red herrings make great arguments.

While we're at it, let's talk about getting rid of the police and fire service in addition to threatening to gut social security if healthcare reform does not go through.

The point of conservativism isn't a rollback of liberal policy. It's containment. To keep the socialist beast from growing. The government already has enough responsibilities to worry about; do you really want the same government that runs TSA at the airport to now help manage your healthcare?

 

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