to want to. He is a doctor so he wants the guarantee that he will get
paid and therefore he wants the HCR. He doesn't really give a damn
about WHO has to pay the bill or why they have to pay the bill; he
just wants paid. He realizes that the auto insurance gambit has been
proven to be a false base so he fluffs that off and instead the health
care insurance is different and should be on a different track. The
auto insurance guy would beg to differ on that but so what.
Meantime what about all those people who did not have to change their
insurance (Obama promise) but now find that they will because they have
to buy the basic policy which has everything in it. I am 70 but I would
have to buy pre-natal care as part of my policy and all sorts of other
things I don't want and don't need. Those who had healthcare savings
accounts for catastrophic coverage will now find they can't have them
any more. And now explain all those waivers (last count was over 750
waivers out there, almost all to FOZ - Friends of Zero - like labor
unions and other organizations who fought for the HCR and now want to be
exempt from it). Add in that the congress also exempted themselves from
the HCR as well. They get to keep their insurance unlike a lot of the
people.
Talk again about all the savings from this boondoggle. Now even the CBO
no longer attempts to pedal that POS. They admit that the HCR will
cause a huge rise in the deficit. Originally they had to come up with
an estimate based on what the Dems in congress fed them and the Dems in
congress left a lot of the big ticket items out and also had 10 years of
taxes to pay for 6 years of expenditures - Enron accounting at its
finest - one would think that Krugman, late of Enron, had something to
do with that one and Bawney Fwank also since he can't see anything wrong
about any government program.
Then we come to the basic point. If you can say that HCR should stand
apart and not be treated like any other transaction and therefore we
should be forced to buy it, where do you draw the line as to what we
have to buy and what we cannot be forced to buy. A case can be made at
any given time that this item or that item is a necessity and should not
be treated like other transactions and therefore we should be forced to
buy it for our own good. Problem is who defines our own good. Last I
heard we should be able to define our own good for ourselves. That is
what our freedom is all about. I realize that the Dems don't believe in
that and feel they should be the ones to define our own collective good
but we are not a collective and we do have Free Will. We also have
freedom of choice as that is the basis of our nationhood in the first
place. This screwy doctor thinks he should have his freedom of choice
and nobody else, unless Zero tells us we can have a waiver to get out of
it and you have to be best buds with him (moneywise) to get that.
This guy is an idiot and should just be disregarded. He does not have
our best interests in mind when he comes up with his hairbrained
thoughts on this subject. He surely does not speak for me.
On 02/01/2011 04:58 PM, Tommy News wrote:
> Health Care Law: What the US Constitution Meant to Say
>
> -by David Katz, MD
>
> Here is a passage lifted ver batim from The New York Times coverage of
> the decision by a federal judge in Virginia that the Obama
> Administration's health care reform legislation was in parts
> unconstitutional:
>
> "Thus far, judges appointed by Republican presidents have ruled
> consistently against the Obama administration, while Democratic
> appointees have found for it."
>
> Richmond, we have a problem. The contents of the U.S. Constitution
> shouldn't change when seen through a red lens, or blue. That the
> meaning of the Constitution varies diametrically when seen from the
> left or seen from the right is, in a word, wrong. It makes reading the
> Constitution sound like reading tea leaves.
>
> In the case of the controversial provision -- the requirement that
> everyone buy health insurance or be penalized -- what DID the
> Constitution mean to say?
>
> Almost certainly: not a thing! When our Constitution was drafted,
> health insurance wasn't on anybody's radar (neither, for that matter,
> was radar). Medicine was primitive; hospitals were all but
> nonexistent; long-term care institutions did not exist. There was no
> dialysis, no organ transplantation, no open heart surgery, no
> angioplasty. Acute threat to life or limb generally meant...loss of
> life or limb. And when the medical services of the day were required
> and of any use, the barter system took care of the costs more often
> than not.
>
> One need not be a Constitutional scholar (and I hasten to note: I am
> not!) to know that the Constitution was silent on health care
> insurance for the same reason it was silent on inter-stellar travel.
> Such concerns were not part of the world in which the document was
> drafted.
>
> So the Constitution is silent on health insurance per se. But it is
> not silent, of course, on government powers and their limits, and
> that's where the controversial interpretations pertaining to health
> care reform originate.
>
> The U.S. Constitution says the government can't force you to buy
> anything. Or at least, it says something like that.
>
> The states can force you to buy auto insurance if you drive a car.
> But, they can't force you to drive -- or own -- a car. So, free will
> prevails! The Constitution is OK with this.
>
> The state can't force you to buy or rent an abode. But the authorities
> can hassle you interminably if you attempt to rest your head in just
> about any alternative place -- just ask a homeless person in any major
> city. Let's call this one a bit gray.
>
> The controversy now is: What about health care, and the insurance that
> generally pays for it?
>
> The decision in Virginia suggests that health insurance is like any
> other commodity, and the federal government does not have the
> authority to force us to buy it. Specifically, Judge Hudson stated
> that the government lacks authority "... to compel an individual to
> involuntarily enter the stream of commerce by purchasing a commodity
> in the private market."
>
> The crux of the matter, then, is involuntarily entering the stream of commerce.
>
> Alrighty, then; what about involuntarily bleeding to death? What about
> a case of involuntary HIV? What about involuntary meningitis, or heart
> failure? Few people I know volunteer for medical calamities. Medical
> calamities are, quite predictably, involuntary. And there's the rub.
>
> On any given day, any of us can be involuntarily thrust into the
> "stream" of health care commerce by an involuntary disaster. Then the
> only question is: will we, or won't we, have a paddle?
>
> When life and limb are imperiled, we intervene -- and worry about the
> bill afterward. Human decency requires nothing less.
>
> But afterward, there IS a bill -- and someone has to pay it. Leaving
> out the details, that someone will be us. It will be paid through our
> taxes, or paid in our health premiums. In other words, we, the
> insured, ARE being forced to 'enter the stream of commerce'
> involuntarily, to pay the bills of those who opted out. Bad enough to
> be forced to buy something for yourself -- how about being forced to
> buy something for the other guy, who opted out of the system and left
> the bill to you and me?
>
> That's the problem with thinking of health care -- and the insurance
> to pay for it -- as if it were any other commodity. People can just
> say no to any other commodity. They can't say 'no' to resuscitation
> from cardiac arrest -- at least not until after they are a beneficiary
> of it!
>
> And worse than that- the only bills we pay on behalf of those who
> choose not to play are the high-cost, post-calamity bills. We don't
> pay for preventive care, so those opting out don't get it. They won't
> get their cholesterol checked, but they will get CPR. They get, and we
> pay for, the worst kind of care: post-catastrophe, high-cost,
> questionable outcome, totally involuntary care.
>
> These are facts, readily substantiated. So where do they leave us?
>
> In doubt, perhaps, about what the Constitution meant to say. But maybe
> the Constitution did not mean to say anything about health insurance,
> because health insurance is not like any other 'commodity.' It flows
> in a current quite apart from the prevailing 'stream of commerce.'
>
> My personal opinion is that health care access should be in the
> Constitution as a case apart. Namely, it should be codified in the
> Bill of Rights as an amendment: everyone has a right to acute medical
> care at a time of crisis. I have made that case before. How can we
> rally around a right to bear arms, but not protect the arms that do
> the bearing? How can we protect the right to assemble, without
> protecting the limbs that carry us to the assembly? Life and limb
> would seem to qualify as priority items, and their protection a public
> good, with widespread public support.
>
> But the Bill of Rights, for now, includes no such entry. In the
> absence of such a constitutional right, perhaps we need the 'No Label'
> movement to help us see the Constitution through a lens that is
> neither blue nor red. Perhaps an uncolored lens would show us more
> clearly what the Constitution meant to say in this case.
>
> While waiting for the politics to play out, while waiting to see if
> the prevailing view of the Constitution is to left or to right, I
> maintain that inconsistent access to health care is wrong.
>
> Our modern politics, and the polarization that currently prevails, is
> inviting us to infer what the Constitution meant to say yesterday.
> That it is open to interpretation and changes when viewed from left or
> right seems to indicate we are far from sure. We are putting words
> never spoken into the mouths of our Founders.
>
> Maybe they just didn't answer this question for us, and we are left to
> figure out for ourselves what constitutes the right thing to do.
>
> More:
> http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-katz-md/left-right-wrong-health-c_b_797516.html
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