I was in favor of a public option for at least three reasons. The first was political. I knew that people would hate being told that they had to buy health insurance from a private for-profit company. Being compelled to spend money is never a good feeling, but being compelled to contribute to someone else’s profit seems like a violation of personal liberty. The second reason was personal. I hate the insurance industry and, in particular, the health insurance industry. I don’t want to give them any money or support. The third reason was ideological. I want to destroy both the health insurance industry and the employer-provided health insurance system, and a public option would probably accomplish that over time.
Yet. I was able to set all those interests and feelings aside in order to see tens of millions of people who are exposed to financial ruin and who have little to no access to health care get some security and better health. We never had the votes for a public option, and I’m not going to harp on it. The polls predictably show that people hate the health insurance mandate. That it is being attacked as unconstitutional is not surprising in the least.
Based on all precedent, the law is not unconstitutional, but the Supreme Court can change that if they see fit. Today, we will get our first hints on whether or not they intend to upend 150 years of constitutional law. And I’m feeling quite apprehensive.
We should remember that the individual mandate originated as a conservative concept based on the idea that freeloaders should not be given a pass to push their health costs on to the rest of us. When Republicans first began touting the individual mandate, they talked about it proudly as an alternative to an employer mandate. They wanted to shift the responsibility for insuring people’s health from private businesses to their employees. It was a matter of personal responsibility. Democrats hated the idea at the time, and most of us still hate it. If you want to compel us to be responsible, then take the money out of our taxes like you do with withholding taxes, Social Security, Medicare, and unemployment insurance. Above all, don’t act all outraged when we take your idea and implement it.
The legal battle against the individual mandate would be easier to take if it was being waged by civil libertarians rather than the authors of the idea. In my entire life, nothing has struck me as more disingenuous than the Republicans’ opposition to the individual mandate. The only thing that comes close is their opposition to TARP.
Romney wants to build an elevator in the garage of his La Jolla mansion for his cars.
.
can get along with his new neighbours. Mind you, paying for $1m homes in cash!
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."When my parents were first married LaJolla was still a beautiful little community and they moved onto dad’s sailboat. To dad’s dismay, mom almost immediately made ‘starts’ of long twining plants that plied their vines to the sailboat’s mast. He was horrorstruck and they moved quickly from LaJolla’s San Diego County up to the ranchland of Orange County.
I’m thinking for some pockets of LaJolla these days an elevator is the equivalent of a dog door in the realm of convenience for the current population.
What? Romney’s cars can’t use the stairs?
This is S.O.P. How is it any more disingenuous than the entire republican program? Obama is a socialist despite having the lowest levels of taxation in 75 years. Obama wants gas prices to be high despite having the highest domestic petroleum production ever. We don’t want to gut medicaid that’s just some text in our bill, which will magically grow the economy by impoverishing the middle class. Obama hates Israel despite, you know, never doing anything to even inconvenience their government. Voter fraud is a massive problem with perhaps a handful of prosecuted cases nationwide which requires us to disenfranchise millions. On and on. Is there a single issue that doesn’t involve massive dishonesty from the republicans? Ok, maybe hating immigrants and women’s autonomy.
I know HCR is before the supreme court right now, but why you gotta go and relitigate the public option again for the billionth time?
Especially when there’s such a lovely little shiv to jam between the firebaggers’ and global warming deniers’ ribs this fine morning.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/epa-to-impose-first-greenhouse-gas-limits-on-p
ower-plants/2012/03/26/gIQAiJTscS_story.html?hpid=z7
After three years of legal and scientific due diligence, the EPA is finally getting down to the business of abolishing coal as an electricity source in this country. Your move, China.
How is this a shiv to stick into the side of lefties?
The Obama administration dragged its feet on this matter. The problem is this didn’t happen months ago. And yes, I am completely familiar with administrative law and how long it takes. Still not enough and not fast enough but at least it isn’t going backwards.
Yes, dearie, they “dragged their feet.” Right into an election year.
Beyond parody. That’s the shiv, right there. So endlessly clarifying.
Dearie? Limiting carbon is more important than election year posturing for the base.
Dearie? The long-advertised implementation of GHG regulations have been limiting carbon emissions since Obama came into office.
Go read some investment-guide reports about power plant companies. The effect of these regulations on the industry is already well underway. They have been working to get ahead of them, and investing capital into converting their fleets, ever since Obama won the election.
This notion that nothing in the power-production industry changes until the final regs are published is simply not consistent with the facts.
What’s with this dearie stuff? Anyhow, they went on a coal-fired power plant building frenzy the last few years because they knew it was coming. That’s how they were working to get ahead of them.
Had this been done faster by the Obama administration we’d be in a better position.
It could have been done faster.
It is better than doing nothing.
I don’t see how these are controversial positions.
I thought “dearie” what we were doing.
Anyhow, they went on a coal-fired power plant building frenzy the last few years because they knew it was coming.
That’s just not true. They went on a gas-fired power plant building frenzy. The old cap-and-trade debate was enough to scare off the energy companies.
I don’t see how these are controversial positions.
Because they are factually incorrect. They do not accurately describe reality. They are not based on evidence from the objective world.
http://www.netl.doe.gov/coal/refshelf/ncp.pdf
Well here’s the coal data. 2010 – Largest build in coal capacity since 1985. That number did drop off in 2011 as it became clear the EPA would eventually regulate. Which is why I think faster would have been better.
Okay, so what are the gas plant numbers?
A coal plant opening in 2010 would have begun the permitting process during George W. Bush’s first term, due to the lag in permitting and the length of the construction process.
A better measure of how the coal industry responded to Obama’s victory, the Supreme Court GHG decision, and the likelihood of EPA regulations would be to look at that report’s projections for 2013 and forward.
Which is zero.
Secondary article I forgot to include in the previous post.
http://motherjones.com/blue-marble/2012/03/end-coal-we-know-it
After three years?
Lisa Jackson, the EPA chief, has been working to end coal as an energy source since 2009. Coal ash regulations, fine-particulate, mercury/toxins rules – there have been a whole raft of regulations, mostly Clean Air Act regulations, that have just happened to fall a lot harder on coal than on other forms of energy.
In 10-15 years, the firebaggers are going to look back at how the EPA killed coal, and have to decide whether Obama got lucky, or whether they made him do it.
Gotta say I passed up apprehension a couple of weeks ago and have gone straight to terror.
If memory serves correctly this idea was cooked up at the Heritage Foundation and presented by Gingrich and Dole as part of the plan the Republicans presented as a challenge to the Clinton plan.
It is also ironic that when President Obama was campaigning he did not propose an individual mandate but both Edwards and Clinton did. The mandate was the reason that Krugman preferred Clinton’s plan to then Sen. Obama’s plan. And Edwards was sort of the darling of the firedoglake/DKOS community.
Then it was the inclusion of the mandate in healthcare reform that caused Hamsher to freak out and team up with Grover Norquist.
The whole long strange trip of the individual mandate makes me want to throw up. Plenty of disingenuous outrage to go around.
Point of historical fact. Hamsher did not join with Norquist over the individual mandate but over a request to Congress to investigate Rahm Emmanuel’s participation in the Fannie/Freddie decision making in 2000 that led to their meltdown in 2008.
And FDL joined in supporting the Sanders-Paul bill demanding an audit of the Fed.
FDL in general did not like the inside deals with provider’s lobbyists that scuttled the private option, nor did they like the fact that a Medicare for All bill was left sitting on the table in the House. Never brought forward.
President Obama’s plan during the campaign never addressed how to get coverage for everyone, which is why a lot of folks jumped to the conclusion that he was an advocate of a single-payer plan.
The whole long strange trip of the individual mandate might turn out what gets us Medicare for All. See my comment above. If that happens, President Obama will rightly or wrongly be remembered by history as a political genius. There is no way to tell right now whether it’s strategy or dumb luck.
You do know that it was not inside deals by the White House that killed the public option, right? That is long debunked. And I got the scoop on it from Olympia Snowe–to my face.
The President said straight out that if we were starting from scratch then he would support single payer but that it wouldn’t work in the current situation. There are many reasons for this. In my work on health care reform I can tell you that one of the big selling points with ordinary folks who get insurance through their employers was the fact that they would be able to keep their insurance and that the present system would be strengthened with more patient protections. There was not public support for single payer.
I also wonder how on earth we could extricate ourselves from the present system directly into single payer. Do you realize how many people are invested in the insurance industry? And I am not talking about the 1%ers. I am talking good union members, teachers, clergy, fire fighters, police officers, ordinary office workers etc. It is a huge industry whose tentacles are spread throughout our economy. It would take a very long time to unwind.
And I have always thought that the hype about the public option was much bigger than the actual benefit. Even the version of the public option that passed the House was problematic. I would argue that the medical loss ratio and the rules provided by DHHS about what constitutes medical care as well as the changing Medicare reimbursement and the exchanges are much more important than a watered down public option.
What I myself know is that Max Baucus killed the public option and that Max Baucus’s aide who drafted the ACA was a former VP Government Relations for Wellpoint, the major for-profit BC/BS health insurer.
I understand the difficulties of moving from employer-subsidized and individual health care and the impact it will have on the people who currently process the paperwork and handle sales and much else. Likely in a Medicare for All environment a lot of the claims processing and call center people would retain jobs as DHHS contracts the processing of Medicare for All to the same folks who do the processing for Medicare. And a lot of the nurses who now spend their time denying coverage could go back to nursing.
The medical loss ratio rules are more important for lowering costs than the public option would have been. What the public option would have done in the context of the exchanges would have been to provide a reference price for comparison. The exchange is helpful only to the extent that buyers can have apples-to-apples comparisons. And the public option would pick up coverage for people shed from employer plans. And employers have been scaling back and dropping plans over the last decade even without a health care reform law.
As for how long it would take to unwind, that depends on the economic multiplier effects of the savings of employers who no longer had to provide coverage.
Bernie Sanders’s comprehensive health care centers would have improved the situation in rural areas and urban “primary care deserts”.
And the creation of exchanges as state exchanges needlessly complicated the pricing system and likely makes the cost to insurers higher by having to create 50 versions of each plan. A cost that they likely would have to absorb unless their MLR numbers allowed them to cover it.
In general, I think that experience with pseudo-market mechanisms like exchanges (and cap-and-trade) are less effective than straightforward government action because of their complexity and the special interest that retains the ability to lobby the Congress for various schemes against the public interest.
I would agree with you that the Public Option would have provided a reference point for pricing IF the reimbursement rates had been tied to Medicare. But because that version of the Public Option couldn’t even make it through the House, what we were left with was a very small pool (limited by income) without the ability to reimburse providers at the lower Medicare rate, and the pool would have been higher risk and sicker making the cost of treatments higher. They were also required to pay their own way which means it really wouldn’t have been that great a deal.
Yep
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jane-hamsher/top-10-reasons-to-kill-th_b_399245.html
http://motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2009/12/strange-bedfellows-indeed
I see the Supreme Court action as a win-win-win for the movement for Medicare for All.
If the court holds the law constitutional, the public still hates it and the Medicare for All movement has until 2014 to get it changed before they’ll really hate it.
If the court holds the entire law unconstitutional, those folks who have gotten insurance in spite of pre-existing conditions, those folks who will face recissions again, and all of the folks who benefited from the parts of the law that went into effect immediately will be angry and ready to move to Medicare for All.
If the court holds only the individual mandate unconstitutional, insurance companies start losing money, the system falls apart, and the only alternative to status quo ante (try to sell that to the public) is Medicare for All.
Instead of criticizing it being in the Supreme Court, give thanks for the court’s timing. And get ready to push harder for Medicare for All.
Let’s not get flatfooted like we were on Citizens United.
Holy crap are you wrong, Tarheel.
We won’t get Medicare-for-all in this country anytime soon, and certainly not during Obama’s presidency. Go look at what senators are up for reelection in 2014. We’re fighting for our lives here and you’re fantasizing about the Court helping us get STRONGER health care?
If the Court rules the mandate unconstitutional, it’s not only going to unravel the reforms, it’s going to open up the whole New Deal to litigation.
The Republicans DO NOT CARE what the public thinks about health care. Right now, two-thirds of them agree with them anyway.
The Republicans will give us zero assistance in patching the system up to operate somehow without a mandate. If people get screwed, the GOP was fine with that before and they’ll be fine with that for the indefinite future. If they lose elections over it, THEY DO NOT CARE.
If the Court rules the mandate unconstitutional, it’s not only going to unravel the reforms, it’s going to open up the whole New Deal to litigation.
There is one difference, and even you mention it up top. This bill makes people pay money to a private company. Medicare, you pay(or have money taken out of your paycheck) and it goes to the Federal Government.
Ultimately, people like Tarheel wind up at the exact same point as the right-wing marauders. “Fuck the poor. Fuck the needy. I want what I want when I want it.”
Contradictions need heightening, my good man.
Another ad hominem I see. What’s your real beef?
he has none. and he’s not really informed either. Bazooka Joe likes to fuss over firedoglake and act the contrarian.
he’s best when ignored. All he’s got is ad hominem attacks.
Quite simply, I don’t trust you. I don’t trust your worldview. I don’t trust your judgment. The idea that anybody would still defend FDL here in the year 2012 is mindboggling to me. They are poison.
And the second blockquote…wow. Just wow. Yeppers, that first black president who ran on the first successful and unabashedly anti-war platform in generations, who then saw the biggest progressive wish list in generations get passed through congress in the face of the last great gasp of institutional white supremacy this country has to throw at him, all the while doing just enough to break the back of rising unemployment and to keep our economy running out ahead of the doddering fools in Europe and Japan, might just receive undue credit and acclaim. What.
How horribly unfair history will be! Monsters.
I used to have a lot of respect for you. You put a lot of thought into what you wrote here. I thought Booman should give you posting rights, if you wanted them now and again. But Occupy Wall Street seems to have broken your brain, dude.
Fair enough. Thanks for responding.
The fact was that the single-payer bill was never brought forward. That is a fact. And my statement about FDL’s beef is also a fact. It was the deal with the providers that made the folks there both in the diaries and comments go sour. And they were not happy about my realism about the legislative process then or now. But that was indeed their position.
The second comment was intended to be restricted to the idea of the striking down of the individual mandate being an anticipated step in securing a single-payer system. It was not intended as a general statement.
Your statement about the rightwing shitstorm of the past four years is on target. And your comment about the economy vis-a-vis Europe I also agree with.
Occupy Wall Street has broadening popular appeal. There is general recognition that both parties have been broken by K Street and that that is one of the things that makes governing not follow the public interest. The President himself has to contend with that broken system. There is much going on in local areas across the country with respect to Occupy Wall Street that the mainstream media do not cover. The people actually in Occupy Wall Street local movements are very diverse and include Obama supporters as well as Obama critics and some very few downright Obama haters. (Progressivism’s support of racial equality having a long and checkered history–see Textile Workers Strike 1938 for a case of progressives and unions leaving African-Americans and Southern whites who were getting killed trying to form a union out to dry).
This is going to be an interesting year for politics. If Obama plays it as Hubert Humphrey (with Rahm playing Richard J. Daley), it’s likely going to turn into another “law n order” campaign from the right. I worry that folks in the White House might not understand this danger.
Again, thanks for your candor. These are difficult times for everyone. There are so many crosscurrents going on that it is difficult to keep up with where old acquaintances are coming from.
What I see is that a lot of the much hashed-over differences of opinion turn out to be less about disagreements over vision or principles, but differences of strategy and tactics. And that there is the frequent error of over-personalizing disagreements.
What deal with providers??
Are you talking pharmaceutical companies?
That was the one that got them upset. There were other deals with AMA and other provider organizations that were not as offensive.
So the 2 million per day the health insurance lobby spent to kill the bill should have been multiplied by the obscene amounts of money the pharmaceutical lobby would have spent?!
I am as frustrated as anybody about the pharmaceutical industry as anyone else but the bill would have been a non starter–not made it out of a single committee unless they cut a deal early.
It was a process issue of secret deals that got the criticism started. A lot of “where is the transparency” questions.
In retrospect, what you say was true. But the committee markup hearings were being livestreamed and liveblogged and none of the behind-the-scenes context was occurring.
There is a lot about the operation of Congress that folks learned for the first time in those hearings. Like the fact that once lawmakers caught on that they were being livestreamed, they started posturing.
In the ARRA markup sessions, you actually saw House members begging for pork and coming to compromise. ACA was all kabuki.
And when the secret PhRMA deal was reported, there was a big deflation like the entire system was rigged against healthcare reform–that the 2008 election didn’t matter at all.
That’s my sense of the emotions that were going on.
No one knew until after the fact that it was a non-starter without cutting a deal with PhRMA because there was the assumption that after being out of power during the Bush years the Democrats would fall in line behind the President.
The strategy is pretty apparent now (and AHIP is plenty PO’d) but it wasn’t in real time.
Those of us who remember the failure of the Clinton bill to make it out of a single committee were hoping that they would cut a deal to separate big pharma from big insurance. That they cut the “donut hole” in half was a bonus. I would have considered it malpractice had they not tried to neutralize big pharma–especially since they did completely change and end the worst abuses of the prescription drug plan that W and congress passed.
And Max Baucus allowed it to go through while Daniel Patrick Monyihan killed it. I understand the Hillarycare PTSD.
FWIW, when I read your remark about PBHO’s perception as a political genius in future years it could not have been more obvious to me that it was limited to health care, and not his performance in general.
As to Occupy sentiments, I’m glad to read your take on the movement. If I can’t always share your optimism, at least you make well-reasoned arguments for your positions, and have a great deal of front-line perspective that I don’t easily get here from 13,000 miles away. Keep it coming, please. There are those of us who greatly appreciate it.
“Frequent error?” I admire your restraint. I wish more of the frequent posters here had even a fraction of it.
fine. But do me a favor and take a more respectful tone. There’s really no reason to abuse people who are doing their best to express their opinions.
You keep acting like this is going to be a normal election year. I suspect that it will not. Folks are getting mad as hornets about Congress’s inaction. And taking away something they already have (for the pre-existing condition folks) is not going to go down well. Nor will forcing folks to buy private insurance (and the Supreme Court case will remind them of something they’ve forgotten over two years). And invalidating the private mandate puts insurance companies in the position of asking Congress to kill all the restrictions on their profits.
The debate about passing ACA was abstract, but now that there are folks benefiting, it is no longer abstract. And some of those folks benefiting are Republicans.
I’m not sure what you’re arguing here, but I suspect this election will resemble 1996 more than anything else. Boring. A foregone conclusion. To be followed by another degeneration into further lunacy from the right.
Presidential election is probably a foregone conclusion, given the clown car. But downticket is still up for grabs. A lot depends on blunting the air war. Patrick McHenry in NC now has relatively strong Democratic opposition from Patsy Keever. That’s an encouraging first in that district.
With the war on women, there is the beginnings of a grassroots backlash to the lunacy of the right.
What is up for grabs isn’t as much the people as the political climate in which they operate. I’m not sure how much further the “government is the problem” folks can go. It is pretty blatant who owns the government at the moment.
If the court holds the law constitutional, the public still hates it and the Medicare for All movement has until 2014 to get it changed before they’ll really hate it.
You’re basing this assumption, that the public will hate the plan once it has been implemented, on what?
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/03/10/massachusetts-health-care_n_834184.html
“84 percent of residents are satisfied with the Massachusetts plan, which requires most adults to have health insurance.”
Rising provider costs, driving higher out-of-pocket costs. More employers shedding benefits. Continued cost shifting because of cuts to Medicaid and the existing deductible/co-pay structure of Medicare. Limits on choices in certain states.
Once again, I ask, then why is a very-similar plan enjoying 84% approval in Massachusetts?
They are looking at their plan compared to other state’s experience and feeling lucky for what they have.
Given that there is no mandate in the ACA that states emulate Massachusetts’s approach, experience is going to vary widely and insurance companies are going to lobby state legislatures to make what comes out of the exchanges and other state regulations to their benefit. The Massachusetts plan is already established and was passed by a Republican governor in a less ideological climate.
It’s likely enjoying 84% approval because it works well enough for 84% of the people and the 16% are a combination of folks for whom it is not working and ideological diehards.
They are looking at their plan compared to other state’s experience and feeling lucky for what they have.
Nonsense. They are looking at what they used to have, and comparing it to what they have. You think a large portion of the public has a good understanding, and a high level of interest, about other people’s situations?
Given that there is no mandate in the ACA that states emulate Massachusetts’s approach….
Well, except for all the ones that do. And except for the vast majority of the plan, which is implemented at the federal level.
But this is all a dodge. The only unpopular element of the ACA is the mandate, which is exactly the same as that in Massachusetts’ overwhelmingly popular plan.
The Massachusetts plan is already established and was passed by a Republican governor in a less ideological climate.
Wait – you think being linked to a Republican is going to make something more popular in Massachusetts? I rather disagree.
Also, the plan was adopted years ago. People’s opinions are no longer about the politics of its implementation, or their ideas of how this unknown system is likely to work out. They’ve been living with it for years, and as you say, are judging it based on their experience.
As will Americans across the country be judging the ACA in 2-3 years. If it survives the challenge.
I’d guess that the reasons why the public is mostly against the individual mandate would include these two:
— the Obama administration hasn’t made a case for it to the public at large
— the public doesn’t trust the mandate not to be onerous to people of modest means.
I’ve never known a supposedly progressive administration to be so incapable of shifting the debate, of making sustained arguments based on values and morals as opposed to half-hearted statements about transient, technocratic details. I also see little reason why people who got no help with their debts and interest rates should trust this administration to create a mandate that doesn’t increase their financial burden.
Republican disingenuousness would be irrelevant if there were strong progressive leadership to counter it.
Fuck the debate. The debate doesn’t matter. This administration wins the games on the field, not through jawjacking and preening in the lead-up to the game.
They’re gamers. They kick ass on writing the legislation, they kick ass at getting the legislation passed (often through an unwilling congress), and then they kick ass anew on the implementation. That’s why the PPACA exists. They won.
Mitt Romney will not win in November. No matter how much the public is alleged to “hate” the health care reforms, Mitt Romney will not win in November. Without both houses of congress, the GOP can’t defund anything, and even if they had both houses and tried, the government shutdown would blow up on them like it always has throughout the history of their party.
There is but one person on earth who can stop the Obama machine. Anthony Kennedy. He’s the one variable that couldn’t be outmaneuvered or placated. And if you want to say that having the public be enthusiastic and overwhelming in their support of the ACA would be enough to guarantee his decision in the right direction, and this is all too close for comfort, I can respect that. I don’t agree with it. I think Kennedy is as much of a straight shooter as any right-leaning judge can still be, and I think he’ll be fair and respectful towards 150 years of jurisprudence.
It drives me crazy. How can an administration that passed nearly universal health care in this country after a century of failure still not be undeniably progressive in your eyes? Why are their motives and their fortitude and their competence never, ever, ever given the benefit of the doubt?
I’ve never known a supposedly progressive administration to be so incapable of shifting the debate, of making sustained arguments based on values and morals as opposed to half-hearted statements about transient, technocratic details.
You’re too young for Jimmy Carter, then.
George H.W. Bush
Gerald Ford
Relative to their conservative base.
I’ve been having a running debate with th director of HCAN PA about what’s going to happen. I’m convinced the SCOTUS is going to declare it unconstitutional. he says they won’t, since they love corporations. I say they will, because they can.
The poor dear, he is convinced that Scalia, Roberts, Altio, and the rest have principles and don’t want to be seen as conservative hacks. He has no adequate response to “what about Bush V. gore” and “citizens united”, among other cases.
I have bet him a keg of hand-crafted ale (an admittedly elitist beverage, I know) if he’s right. He doesn’t have to anything for me if I’m right. I know I’m going to be right.
I’m worried but I kind of expect the SCOTUS to affirm the mandate.
I remember how Kennedy caved when he came to precipice with Casey v. Planned Parenthood. At heart, I don’t think he’s a radical. The other four? I have no faith in them, but I think Roberts and Scalia probably will hold their fire if they don’t have Kennedy. Alito? I’m not sure. He likes government power, ironically. But he’s also a movement guy. My prediction right now is a 8-1 or 7-2 ruling in favor of the mandate. But I think it comes down to Kennedy because if he’s willing to go for ripping up the Commerce Clause then all bets are off. It could go down 5-4 for repeal. I don’t think the mandate is severable, and I don’t think these corporate cronies would say otherwise.
not what I’m reading at orange satan and TPM. their headlines, as well as in coporate news sources, say “the mandate is in serious jeopardy.”
Jeff Toobin commenting on the spectacular job that Paul Clement did today and the awkward job of arguing from Govt. And yes all the headlines are screaming grave danger for the mandate.
Listening to Toobin though and the SCOTUS blog speaker I had a shiver that Roberts was the one holding his powder and may end up the swing vote.
In the end, win or lose, it will remain troublesome that the left never jackhammered the message into the brains of the American people. These latest polls are just horrendous.
Santorum is doing his aggitated thing again as he recognizes what even the whiff of the mandate crashing does to Mitt’s campaign.
The “left” had no energy left for that after hammering on Obama 24/7 for bieng the most sucessful progressive president in living memory. And they will waste their energy arguing with themselves that it was the right thing to do, and whether they should have scrapped the year of effort that went into drafting the only healthcare bill ever sucessfully passed in favour of the ‘perfect bill’, for the next 20 years.
Constant critiism is easy. Orginising themselves into a movement that doesn’t involve just sitting in a park playing drums and arguing whether they should make any demands? Woah, that like takes effort, man.
With friends like these who needs enemies. The Vietnam hippie protesters had more smarts than the present bunch of “leftists”. Who knows, maybe it would have been different if Obama was white. Yeah, I went there.
As they say around where I grew up, a lot of you need a good kick up the hole. But it is what it is, and while “leftists” are argiung, the Obama campaign is busy quietly but remorselessly orginising itself for the election. You know, doing things.
I was with you in thinking that the Supreme Court would uphold the mandate until I started reading the questions and answers from today.
Now I think it will be overturned. I am spitting mad at this point.
Interestingly, yesterday there were a lot of questions to Katsas about whether they could even claim a “pocketbook injury” since there is no enforcement of the penalty (which is the fine that is assessed through the IRS). If you read the section of the law dealing with the mandate, it makes it very clear that no penalties or fines or liens can be levied for failure to pay.
It is a mandate with no enforcement mechanism.
Here is the language from the law.
Sec. 1501 Requirement to maintain minimum essential coverage.
“(g) ADMINISTRATION AND PROCEDURE.–
“(1) IN GENERAL.–The penalty provided by this section
shall be paid upon notice and demand by the Secretary, and
except as provided in paragraph (2), shall be assessed and
collected in the same manner as an assessable penalty under subchapter B of chapter 68.
“(2) SPECIAL RULES.–Notwithstanding any other provision
of law–
“(A) WAIVER OF CRIMINAL PENALTIES.–In the case of
any failure by a taxpayer to timely pay any penalty imposed
by this section, such taxpayer shall not be subject to any
criminal prosecution or penalty with respect to such failure.
“(B) LIMITATIONS ON LIENS AND LEVIES.–The Secretary
shall not–
“(i) file notice of lien with respect to any property
of a taxpayer by reason of any failure to pay the
penalty imposed by this section, or
“(ii) levy on any such property with respect to
such failure.”.
What happened to the severability clause that was in Baucus’s original bill? I read all of this stuff back in 2009. The severability clause was in all the legislation. What happened to it?
It got dropped during the flurry of the final scuffle. They are still trying to argue intent and prescedent but it’s a weakened stance.
Sounds like how Phil Gramm deregulated everything on Wall Street.
It’s legislative boilerplate FFSMS.
I love the fact that you’re still so bothered about being called out for claiming that brewing your own beer makes you a populist that you can’t stop writing about it a month later.
God help me, I know I shouldn’t love it this much, but I do. I wouldn’t remember you from one day to the next if you didn’t keep doing this, but you’re still seething about this, and that’s awesome.
I think you err in accepting that conservatives ever supported the individual mandate in the first place.
It was never anything but a red herring they threw out to try to derail Clinton’s health care plan, and they dropped it as soon as it outlived its usefulness in stopping reform.
The Republicans controlled Congress from 1995-2007, and had the White House for 6 of those years, without lifting a finger to try to implement a universal insurance-coverage scheme with an individual mandate.
In this case, the answer to “Were you lying then or are you lying now?” is “I was lying then.”
I agree. Being a Republican in Congress means constantly making up excuses for their inaction in opposition to Democratic initiatives.
Great information was shared, thanks for the forum submission. Assignment writing help is the best way to get your assignment completed without fail. If you want plagiarism checker tool you can visit Instant Assignment Help UK. We are available 24/7 so you can contact us anytime through email, phone or chat and get 100% plagiarism-free papers within the deadline.
Thanks for sharing this information I am James Parker, a proficient academic writer dedicated to assisting students in USA. With a passion for education, I offer expert best assignment writing service, ensuring students’ success in their academic journeys. Through my writing, I strive to provide comprehensive support, helping learners excel in their studies. With a deep understanding of various subjects and a commitment to delivering high-quality work, I empower students to overcome challenges and achieve their academic goals. My experience and dedication make me a reliable resource for those seeking guidance and excellence in their assignments within the dynamic educational landscape of USA.