Obamacare and the Commerce Clause
on 11/13/2011 at 08:56 PM
Also hitting the Supremes (but under the msm radar) is a lawsuit that the (p)Resident isn’t legal under the NBC clause to be President of the US - this one will (hopefully) get a fair hearing. He is claiming that according to Occidental - Obama registered as Barry Soetoro and got financial aid as a foreign student and that there is no record in the US of him having applied for US citizenship. Makes for an interesting case, as there are papers that he went to school in Indonesia as Barry Soetoro - and yes, he can claim that they (Lolo and Stanley Ann lied - which may be true) - but you and I know that there has to be a reason that all his college records are locked up tighter than the crown jewels (hey you can see them now and then).
I’m still on the fence about the Obamacare & the Supreme Court - they nixed the original challenge to the (p)Resident - now with the two ‘compelling stories’ females appointed by The Won - I’m not so sure - but maybe they were put in just to rid the Supremes of squishy libs.
Who knows any more - so much is lies, damn lies and liberal bullsh*t anymore.
Health care is one area where the courts have the applied the commerce clause exactly backwards from the original intent. It was supposed to keep a state from putting tariffs on stuff from other states. It was not meant to protect a business within a state.
The argument is that every American at some point in his or her life will need healthcare, and that the healthcare industry as a whole therefore is an interstate enterprise. Please note that I don’t agree with this interpretation, I’m just saying that’s how ‘they’ justify it.
re: the fact that medical insurance is segregated by state - that’s just plain ludicrous. If true competition was enabled by removing that restriction, we’d see cute little lizards selling affordable medical insurance every 5 minutes on TV.
Hmmm, every American also needs food, clothing, shelter, etc. Why is healthcare any different? Their ‘justification’ is ridiculous. As is the argument that you have to have car insurance. Sure, only if you have a car. And here in Ohio, I don’t even have to do that: I can post a bond for $30 grand. Most people don’t have that, I certainly don’t. But I do own property I could post.
I was talking to my bishop last night about this whole thing. I pointed out that the pioneers who crossed the plains and settled in Utah didn’t have any healthcare insurance. They managed without it. Just thought I’d throw that in. Healthcare insurance is a luxury item. It is not necessary.
I’m also finding that healthcare isn’t that expensive without health insurance. At least for what I would call ‘regular maintenance.’ My doctor charged me $60 for an office visit I would have paid $20 for with copay. My dentist? He hardly got paid anything by my former insurance anyway. Now that I’m uninsured, it’s cheaper: he gives me a 20% discount since I’ve been his patient for two decades. And his staff doesn’t have to file paperwork. It’s cheaper for me to take the discount. Wish I’d known that before. I’d have saved him a lot of paperwork, and myself a lot of money.
This doesn’t cover serious stuff, like cancer, heart attacks, etc. That’s why I want to be able to shop for a catastrophic insurance plan and couple that with a medical savings account for regular stuff. No different from shopping for car, life, or home insurance, plus it relieves employers of the burden of providing health insurance. The whole notion of employer-provided health insurance is a holdover of FDR’s WWII wage and price controls.
DNS problems and nothing resolved til this morning when our tech folks opened.
Chris ... not starting any arguments with anyone. Must say that, because it seems that discussing health care in America has become close to arguing religion. Ppl feel very strongly. Problem is my friend, some folks and especially those far younger then I am, don’t realize what they are in for when they reach my age. Which is now 74. And trust me, nothin’ gets better.
There is a big difference between health care and buying clothing or food. At least with a shirt or a pair of pants, you can wear those til they wear out but you won’t be charged outrageous monthly payments for the same shirt with an increase every 6 mos to a year.
I think the biggest fear we have is finding ourselves taken to the cleaners if while home in the US, one of us has a serious illness with only medi-care. And try finding supplemental at age 74 that pays anything.I have a cousin who was once a surgical nurse. When she left that profession, she went into medical real estate but then specialized in the selling of doctor’s practices. I wish I had one of her old listings to share with you here. It’s long lost or else still stored someplace in CA. with our other stuff. Chris, it would make your eyes pop no kidding. The prices a doc can get for a practice with a listing of only 17 to 20 hours a week. Mind boggling.
Now don’t get me wrong. I see nothing wrong with getting whatever the market will allow. But seeing the many,many hundreds of thousands of dollars for a GP practice listing 17 hours a week was an eye opener. Some listings had only 10 hours. And those were not all specialists.
Then there’s the overpriced and ever gouging drug industry AND .... the individual pharmacies like Longs in CA. who mark up an over the counter medication by 400%. I personally saw that.
Oh yeah, and then the other robber barons in the form of hospitals who mark up medication on drugs we knew (thanks to my cousin) were free to them, or else charging for medication a patient never got. And the ins. companies cave in and pay the bill cos it’s easier to pay then fight the hosp. for the money. And they in turn pass it on to the patient in the form of higher premiums.
As you know, the wife and I recently were home on a visit. I know folks make fun of fruits and nuts Calif. but what can I say? It’s home and not everyone falls into that category.
Well, we had to get some meds that just are not available here in the UK and we spent many hundreds of dollars doing it. Last year my medi-care paid some of the cost. But I guess there was a change this past year and I wasn’t covered at all. And even the doc we saw, who has a special practice for non emerg. and non serious health issues, cost us $100 each for a quick exam and the writing of Rxes which was the only reason to see him in the first place. The Rx’s.Sure, those early settlers were a rough breed and there wasn’t any insurance. There also wasn’t the modern medical profession that came later or the cures discovered 100 years later. Many ppl died from untreated or unrecognized infections. They didn’t even have Aspirin til the Germans invented it years after their time in 1897. (Bayer)
There isn’t any fair comparison between the pioneers who crossed the plains and today’s
health care. Anyway, health care insurance isn’t a luxury in the sense you use the term.
Unless I misunderstood how you were using it. For many old farts, health ins. is most certainly a dire necessity where a serious illness can wipe one out financially.
You’ll find that out when you’re very much older. Hopefully by then you’ll be sitting on a huge pile of ready cash and trust me, you’ll need every dime unless things very much different in Ohio then they are in CA.Peiper beat me to it. As the pioneers moved west, so did the graveyards. Life was tough, death was never far away, and they succumbed left and right.
Not that things were any different in the cities and towns. Disease, epidemics, slave driving bosses in utterly unsafe work environments, poor food, a near total lack of sanitation and hygiene, medical knowledge barely above the zero level, uncertain food supply, all sorts of air and water pollution, plus the even present risk of fire. Now add in the rather brutal approach most of the human race had in its interpersonal dealings (war, crime, ‘police brutality’, wife and child abuse, et al) and it’s a wonder anyone made it past 30.
I did a post the week before last about the world population topping 7 billion. Look up the population growth curves across time and correlate that to the advancement of medicine and social support. They go hand in glove. If medical help was limited to some pain killers, a few common antibiotics, and the ability to set broken bones, AND the food supply was limited to whatever could be grown or transported within a 100 mile radius, you’d see the world population drop like a rock in only a decade or two right down to 1930s levels. Heck, the population today is far more than double (135% increase) than what it was when I was born. And I ain’t old!!!!
Regarding health insurance (God it peeves me to hear that called “health care”. It is NOT the same thing whatsoever), you ought to be able to get what you want, and then pay for it. Personally, I enjoy fairly good health so far, so all I’d want now is Major Medical. It isn’t even worth it for me to have a dental or vision plan. Both cost more than an annual trip to the dentist and a new set of glasses every 3 years. So I see no reason that I should be forced into buying some kind of universal do-all policy that would cover me for everything from diptheria to hair transplants and breast enhancement.
It’s all about risk, and that’s a personal assessment. How much are you willing to live with? If the answer is zero, then your health insurance is going to cost a fortune. And that’s only fair.
Insurance is a hand in the pot - and it is part of the cost of medical care. Lawyers are another hand in the pot. Attaching health insurance (why not car insurance or life insurance or home owners insurance - while you’re at it) to a job is also another hand in the pot. And finally Congress which is so busy regulating and spending - that add even more hands in the pot. Which all add up to a lot of entities getting money - for nothing that has to do with medical care at all.
Rush & Chris pay for their medical care without insurance. It works for them - and believe me - if and when our fortunes turn around - We will probably do the same thing. Husband through VA - hasn’t seen a doc in years (he’s a disabled vet) - and the last time, his doc said - You don’t want the VA operating on that, they don’t have a good track record. Kids & I on Tricare - just notified that they ‘lost’ our medical info - AGAIN. So what is the good of paying every month for something that isn’t providing decent or even minimal medical care? And jeopardize your financial/personal security - don’t forget Obamacare wants all medical records to go digital and oh, yes the IRS gets to check, to insure you’ve gotten your approved insurance. What could go wrong with that?
All that is moot - When gov can step in and force Americans to purchase something - no matter what the justification is. The toe is in the door and believe me, what comes next will be appalling. If not down-right fatal.
I pray that the Supremes do the right thing - but since Kagan probably won’t recuse herself, I don’t have much hope.
My Dad, his brother, his Uncle and his Father donated, bartered and did what was necessary to provide medical care to the people who came to them. I’ve gone through hundreds of letters from all over the country (and my Dad died in 1968 - most of the others were long dead by then) thanking him for his care. And in 1965 all of that changed. Thanks to the gov - let us hope that it isn’t going to change again, with even more gov involvement.
May they all rot in hell.
This is an interesting topic and I think it’s looked at differently depending on age. To a small degree perhaps.
When we lived in TN. and I had surgery for a bladder tumor, I was lucky enough at the time to have some coverage through a group plan. Which later died as the clients did or so I gather.
Ppl in the music business and in this case those associated with publishing, were offered a plan through Mutual of New York. (MONY) How many folks actually are able to read all that lawyer stuff printed small, and then understand it. Beside Drew I mean. lol. I really think you do understand ALL that stuff Drew. Heck, you might even enjoy reading it given your sense of humor.Well anyway ... between the doctor’s office exams (P A I N!FULL!)and the xrays and finally the hosp. stay and then the followup after surgery, the bill was huge. As you’d imagine. OK, it wasn’t open heart surgery and nowhere near that cost, but I’m talking like maybe 25 or 27 years ago. It was in the thousands and even then we still coughed up a few thousand of our own that just was not covered by my ‘major medical.’ But then odd things started to happen. Like ... I was getting older and the policy I had was increasing in price and not just once a year on my birthday. Seems ppl were falling out of the plan either by choice or by death and the group was shrinking thus increasing the premium. To a point were I couldn’t afford it anymore. They increased the premium to $1,000.00 a month, in an effort to discourage those still with the plan which they wanted to drop. I can’t say as I blame them for that however. It’s a business after all, not a free lunch. Or it isn’t supposed to be. I had MONY for years without ever making any claim whatever, till my surgery. And of course, the premiums when I joined were ridiculously affordable. Hey, that’s life. Right? But one must remember that at least in my case if not my generation, we were conditioned to believe that health ins. was a must at some point in time. Like car ins. cos you never know what the future holds in store. And you always trusted your ins. agent to know what’s best. Sure, not anymore. But back then a lot of us did cos hell, who could read all that stuff among all that paper? Except for your agent and Drew. And Drew probably being the one of the two who really would understand it all.
Based on the costs I’ve seen in the past with regard to exams that are not voluntary and hospital stays due to surgery and I’m not referring to elective surgery to enhance body parts, I mean serious stuff. Gee, what would a person do who had a stroke or a heart attack or unexpected injuties and was hospitalized? How would you manage to pay for that without ins. to help defray the costs? You could conceivably end up bankrupt trying to pay for that.
And the older you are, the closer you are to that scenario. And the older you are before that happens, the harder it is to get any sort of coverage that’s affordable. Plus, with pre-existing conditions ... I don’t even wanna go there.Obviously I don’t have the answer. Just lots of questions.
Guess I didn’t quite make my point peiper. I’m not against insurance for healthcare. I’m against both being forced to buy it via gov’t mandate, or forced to provide it to others as a welfare benefit.
I’m also against other mandates. So far, it is mandated, by the gov’t, that all health insurance policies cover prenatal care, smoking cessation, mental health, etc. Stuff I don’t need and don’t want, but have to pay for. Unless God comes down and tells me I’m Abraham and she’s Sarah, we’ve no need for prenatal care. Especially since she had her tubes tied during her first marriage. These mandates are also a problem in the high cost of health insurance.
If you want health insurance, buy it yourself. Is that harsh? Possibly. I remember years ago during ClintonCare which, thankfully, went down in flames, I was listening to a Cincinnati talk show. It was a union talk show and some slob was on there whining how he couldn’t afford his Dad’s healthcare. I was yelling at the radio (don’t yell at the radio, it doesn’t care) ‘I can’t afford your Dad’s healthcare either!’
11/15/2011 at 05:31 AM
