"What are conservatives trying to conserve"?

[ArlJim78]

Originally Posted by jms62

How about auto insurance?

So if you don't want the government to mandate insurance then I assume you are good with paying astronmical rates for yours as Hospitals pass the cost of all those that don't have insurance but show up to the Emergency room that they have to treat.

in the case of auto insurance you are voluntarily seeking to drive your car, nobody is forcing you to drive a car. Having insurance as a precondition to driving your car is not the same as requiring that you purchase health insurance just because you are alive. if you don't want to buy auto insurance you have alternatives, whereas with health insurance they're saying that you either buy it or pay a penalty.

part of the problem is that nobody can define why it's okay for government to mandate that you buy insurance, but not okay for government to say mandate that you buy only American made products. they are trying to claim that health insurance is a special case, but the arguments don't hold up. the idea behind our constitution is to protect us from government tyranny like this awful health care legislation.

[Riot]

Originally Posted by ArlJim78

in the case of auto insurance you are voluntarily seeking to drive your car, nobody is forcing you to drive a car. Having insurance as a precondition to driving your car is not the same as requiring that you purchase health insurance just because you are alive.

The government commerce clause argument is that everybody uses health care, thus everybody is a consumer of health care. It's a good one, and has already been upheld by two very conservative and well-respected district court judges. The odds are great that the Supremes will do the same in June.

A study was released yesterday that says only like 2-5% of people will be affected by the mandate. Most Americans are exactly as they are now - completely unaffected by Obamacare except for increased consumer protections they now enjoy. I'll try and find it.

Found it:

In fact, the mandate would be most likely to hit about 25 million people when it takes effect in 2014 — many of whom are younger, healthier people who were taking the chance of going without health insurance even though they might have been able to afford it — according to MIT economist Jonathan Gruber. That’s out of 272 million nonelderly people.

Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories...#ixzz1qSBh8Fwd

And here: http://www.urban.org/UploadedPDF/412...al-Mandate.pdf

By Jennifer Ng’andu, Deputy Director, Health Policy Project, NCLR

If there’s one thing that people know about the Affordable Care Act (ACA), it’s that the nation’s health care law includes an individual mandate, or requires that all Americans obtain health insurance beginning in the year 2014.

If there’s one thing that people don’t know about the ACA, it’s that this responsibility will not apply to most Americans, including most Latinos.

Since the day of the ACA’s passage, there has been misinformation leading many to believe that this requirement will be far reaching and leave many Americans vulnerable to serious penalties. Luckily, the Urban Institute has come forward to clear this matter up. Yesterday, they released a brief that shows, for all intents and purposes, that only about 7 percent of non-elderly Americans would actually face the mandate in any real way.

The facts are that most Americans will either already have insurance; others will be able to get it with new options. Here’s the breakdown:

* Most Americans, including Latinos, are insured and will still be insured after the Affordable Care Act’s enactment. NCLR often discusses the point that Latinos are the most uninsured community in the country, because we fight for those with the least access to health care. Still, nearly seven in ten Latinos already have insurance.

* In fact, in accordance with President Obama’s classic line, “you can keep what you have,” most people will still get insurance through their employers and nothing will change. This includes about four in ten Latinos who have employer-sponsored insurance.

* Half of the uninsured would soon gain health care through Medicaid or the Children’s Health Insurance Program through new coverage in the Affordable Care Act. This will be critical for Latinos; one in four uses those programs today.

* The other half would have ready access to a new insurance marketplaces, exchanges, and anyone under 400 percent of the federal poverty level (FPL) would get a tax benefit to help pay for coverage.


Where the challenge lies is with those who remain uninsured after the ACA is fully carried out, a good 23 million Americans by Congressional Budgetary Office (CBO) estimates. What will happen to them? Most will have the ability to claim an exemption from any responsibility to purchase health coverage. The Affordable Care Act contained safeguards that said that if you cannot afford to pay, face hardship, have religious beliefs that dictate you remain uninsured, or are among a series of people who were prohibited from buying insurance or to whom the law did not apply—you will not be penalized if you remained uninsured.

That’s a lot of the 23 million. In fact, this was one of the conditions of NCLR support for the Affordable Care Act. A mandate is only fair if the people who don’t have means to fulfill it are free from repercussions.

Yesterday, the Supreme Court of the United States spent hours in hearings to decide whether or not the mandate was constitutional, and will soon decide whether or not the fate the entire ACA is tied to this part of the law. Why does this matter to Americans if it applies to only a select group? Without the mandate, the estimates of the number of Americans who would go uninsured after health reform would increase from the original 23 million to between 40 and 42 million—an increase of nearly 40 percent over the mandate projections. This result has a lot to do with the likelihood that those Americans who chose uninsurance would be the healthiest Americans…at the time. And those who chose insurance would more likely have a greater need for health care and would be more expensive to cover. Urban Institute estimates that health insurance premiums would increase between 10–25 percent, putting affordable health insurance out of reach for many more Americans.

If the justices decide that the mandate does not hold up to our forefathers’ vision, the Affordable Care Act can still move forward—but at what consequence?

[Riot]

Here's a great article, which quotes in depth Ezra Klein's analysis of R-Paul Ryans budget plan, including his privatization of Medicare. Ryans "premium support" Medicare plan? Turn Medicare into Obamacare. Same thing.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/0...ization-Dream-

Originally Posted by Riot

The government commerce clause argument is that everybody uses health care, thus everybody is a consumer of health care. It's a good one, and has already been upheld by two very conservative and well-respected district court judges. The odds are great that the Supremes will do the same in June.

Don't bet on it; the only question in my mind is how far the Supremes will go. Entire ACA or just parts of it?

Time to go for the single-payer system like just about every other modern nation in the world. Unconstitutional to force "commerce" on someone, but perfectly constitutional to provide a needed service to that same someone using powers that already exist.


Ocala Mike

[Riot]

Originally Posted by Ocala Mike

Don't bet on it; the only question in my mind is how far the Supremes will go. Entire ACA or just parts of it?

The Supreme Court asked the very same tough and seemingly biased questions the two lower court very conservative judges asked, before those two very conservative judges ruled clearly and without doubt to uphold it. You don't know what they will do, until they do it, but law precedent is on the side of upholding it all, as indicated by the two ultra-conserves lower court that already have agreed.

Right now all the noise is simply politicking and the press trying to create a story out of the vacuum of two-plus months of waiting.