What if repeal of health care reform succeeded?
This is the most interesting read of the day. An essay that answers the question, “If this bill doesn’t survive judicial scrutiny, then what?” The most salient point that offers some new perspective:
Well, first, the government would have a mess on its hands dealing with the unwinding of a complex health care bill which includes not only health care provisions, but radical changes to the student loan infrastructure, tax cuts for most (and tax increases for some), and more. The states attorneys general suing to overturn the health care law would find themselves shifting from popular ground to highly unpopular ground once it became known that the consequence of success would include collecting billions in back taxes which Americans suddenly owed because the tax break which existed under the health care bill had disappeared.The rest deals with the effects of the paltry Republican alternatives, which basically covers ground that has already been analyzed separately over the last couple of years, but well worth reading the concise review of how it would generate a "race to the bottom" for health insurance consumers.
Most obviously, overturning the health care bill would return the health care regime to the status quo ante which most everyone agrees was both failing and unaffordable, a miserable combination. [...]
Taken in its entirety, it almost makes me wish the Republicans succeed. The mess it would create might really ensure they lose the reins of power for the foreseeable future this time. Maybe it would even force them to embrace reality-based policy positions in the future.
Labels: health care, policy, Republicans
posted by Libby Spencer at 12:44 PM
2 Comments:
Libby Spencer "Well, first, the government would have a mess on its hands dealing with the unwinding of a complex health care bill"
If the Obamacare is thrown out completely by the SCOTUS (very unlikely imo), then the "mess" is the cost we pay to follow only Constitutionally valid laws.
Any "blame" for the "mess" should be assigned to those that passed the Unconstitutional legislation, not on those that challenged it.
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Ms Spencer "it almost makes me wish the Republicans succeed. The mess it would create might really ensure they lose the reins of power for the foreseeable future this time."
So its just about which party has power eh?
The GOP for all of its faults, did not include a individual insurance mandate in the health care reform legislation.
Hopefully sooner, rather than later the SCOTUS will rule on the law
I would suppose that Mitt Romney's inexplicable credibility would take a hit if the court shuts it down; he having been responsible for a strikingly similar Massachusetts program.
But that program can be justified as being the result of the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act of 1986 requiring emergency rooms to provide care for all. If that act is a legal regulation of commerce, justified by the shared concern for public health and safety, then perhaps it's permissible to require insurance so that the taxpayer can receive reimbursement for "free" services they're required to pay for - and be able to take personal responsibility rather than making us insured people foot the bill.
Otherwise we pay a hidden but very large tax in the inflation of our individual medical costs. As you say, it would be a mess and lots of things the public depends on and sees as important would fall down.
I could site all kinds of similar government requirements that could be, if one were glib enough, described as having no constitutional support -- the need to carry a government photo identification card, for one, but I don't as yet hear a lot of shouting over that.
We seem far more concerned that some willfully indigent parasite might get his TB treated for free or his children vaccinated than that the government can tap your phone, read your mail and examine your financial records, which is, in my opinion, as unconstitutional a thing as has been done in recent times.
Hell, I could argue that speed limits aren't allowed by the constitution. A joy ride at 190 certainly isn't commerce, so why should they regulate my fun? Sure that's a deliberate oversimplification for the purpose of distortion, but so is this alleged constitutional question.
Certainly it's up to the Court,
I agree that the SCOTUS will find it constitutionally permissible. I don't think they have much of a choice. A sick population, like unregulated traffic is a threat to public health, to say the least and few serious illnesses can be treated in the Emergency Room. If the courts so choose, they can describe this as a way to make us take responsibility for our own health. That they don't is more a matter of political tribalism so we see republican resistance to a Republican idea. If they're for it, we're against it.
Is it permissible, BTW, for a President to initiate and conduct war without consent of Congress? Is it constitutional to declare emergency powers to override the constitution without declaring a war? Neither party seems to have much of a problem with the heavy duty constitutional question there -- as long as the profits from war fund their campaigns, we'll just call it something else and so it's allowed.
Sorry to sound cynical again, but what constitutes "intrusion" by "big government" seems to have little to do with anything else but the interests of Industry and "Obamacare" certainly is in the interest of insurance companies. The Republicans made it so.
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