Marketwatch ran this article yesterday. There are more like it on the internet today. Medical fascism is alive and well in America. My comments are in red below.
March 27, 2012, 1:39 p.m. EDT
Justices show split over health-insurance mandate
High court adopts ideological stances on purchase requirement
By Russ Britt, MarketWatch
LOS ANGELES (MarketWatch) — Supreme Court justices appeared to be split along ideological lines after hearing arguments over whether U.S. citizens should be made to buy insurance — the central issue in the health-care-reform debate — in a second day of hearings Tuesday.
Obamacare is medical fascism. Fascism occurs when government regulates corporations to such an extent that they are just arms of the government with the illusion of private property rights. Government is telling medical corporations and insurance companies how to run their business and it is forcing the individuals of society to buy it. This is sickening and tyrannical.
Blog reports from The Wall Street Journal and other sources, however, indicated that there may be two swing votes in Chief Justice John Roberts and the court’s perennial ideological straddler, Justice Anthony Kennedy.
President George W. Bush nominated Chief Justice John Roberts in 2005. He filled the vacancy left by the death of William Rehnquist. President Ronald Reagan appointed Justice Anthony Kennedy in 1988.
Reports showed that the court’s liberal bloc, Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, were arguing in favor of the 2010 Affordable Care Act and its so-called individual mandate during the two-hour debate.
I wonder what portions of the US Constitution the liberal judges were using to support their arguments for the 2010 Medical Fascism Bill?
Meanwhile, conservative appointees to the high court were strongly challenging those who were supporting the requirement that all U.S. citizens be insured. Solicitor General Donald Verilli faced rapid-fire questioning from Justices Antonin Scalia and Samuel Alito in the latter half of the two-hour argument devoted to the question.
What were the Solicitor General’s arguments for forcing U.S. citizens to buy health insurance? What part of the US Constitution
Throughout the debate, the Journal’s blog indicated that Ginsburg, Kagan and Breyer came to Verrilli’s defense several times as the law faced skeptical questioning from the more conservative justices.
Ginsburg argued at one point that the decision by an individual not to buy insurance affects others. But Scalia and Alito questioned that. Alito contended that the law forces young, healthy people “to subsidize services that will be received by somebody else.”
Individuals make billions of decisions everyday not to buy millions of products or services marketed to them worldwide. Their decision not to buy affects others, but so what? Producers of goods and services must persuade individuals to buy their goods voluntarily. They must make them a better deal. They must serve customers desires or they will go bankrupt. Is everyone obligated by government force to buy goods and services that they don’t want just because the seller of the good or service might be affected? This is lunacy. Justice Ginsburg absolutely abhors a free market. Hasn’t she affected red robe makers by not buying their red judge robes and wearing a black robe instead. Should the government force her to buy red robes instead of black robes be she is affecting them. If they do, then now the black robe clothiers are affected. She is a Marxist in supreme court justice’s clothing.
If there is no individual mandate, Ginsburg also said, it would force the price of insurance higher. Scalia countered that’s no different than buying a car; if fewer people buy cars, that could force up prices.
Supreme court justices have no concept of economics. Politicians enact laws prohibiting free and open competition amongst producers. The existing producers lobby the politicians to enact barriers to entry for new competition. This reduces the supply of healthcare while increasing the price of healthcare. Cartels are bad for consumers of healthcare. Consumers get high prices and crappy healthcare. What is needed is the elimination of government involvement in healthcare. Large profit margins will attract entrepreneurs to invade the existing healthcare market to provide better healthcare than is currently available from the healthcare cartel.
Roberts wondered whether the requirement to buy health insurance is the same as forcing individuals to prepare for other types of emergencies, according to Journal posts. Later, he said the requirement to buy insurance could open the doors for Congress to require the purchase of other types of goods in the future.
“All bets are off,” Roberts remarked.
It is immoral to force an individual to allocate his life, liberty, or property to the purchase of goods that he has already voluntarily decided not to purchase. How would the justices like being forced to cross train for a triathlon three hours per day so they can stay fit and not affect the healthcare systems’ costs which “affects others” who pay the taxes that pay for the healthcare system?
Verrilli has responded in most instances by framing the issue around market regulation, which is something that Congress can oversee under the Constitution’s interstate-commerce clause. The clause gives Congress the power to regulate markets. Virtually all individuals are or will become part of the health-care market, he has argued.
The interstate-commerce clause does not give the congress the power to regulate markets. It was supposed to prevent states from enacting tariffs that would keep commerce from being “regular”. See Judge Andrew Napolitano’s more eloquent explanations here: http://tinyurl.com/bp47ny3 . Statists of both parties had use this clause to justify regulation of everything and anything.
Kennedy said Verrilli needed to answer a “very heavy burden of justification” to show how the Constitution authorizes Congress to require that individuals buy insurance or pay a penalty. At one point, Kennedy commented that the mandate changes the relationship between citizens and the government “in a fundamental way.”
If you really want to see the legitimacy of the US Constitution or any constitution destroyed, then read Lysander Spooner’s “No Treason: The Constitution of No Authority” essay from the 19th century. Spooner was an abolitionist in the late 19th century. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Treason
But both Kennedy and Roberts grilled Paul Clement, the attorney arguing to strike the mandate on behalf of 26 states.
The law is patently unconstitutional since providing healthcare is not an enumerated power of congress in Article I Section 8. Don’t these justices see the tyranny that is involved here?
Roberts noted that the government is simply trying to regulate the financing of health care, while Kennedy said all citizens are part of the health-care risk pool, according to the Journal’s blog.
During that portion of the session, Scalia and Alito reportedly did not challenge Clement, indicating they’re planning to support overturning the mandate.
Without the individual mandate, other provisions of the law could be struck down. The mandate places healthy people into the risk pool so that their costs can be shared with those of unhealthy persons.
But it is possible that the court will strike down only the individual mandate, leaving the requirement that insurance companies must offer coverage to any individual, regardless of his or her health history.
If you believe in voluntary exchange, free markets, and property rights; then you should see the immorality of forcing insurance companies to offer coverage to individuals that they would voluntarily choose not to insure. People that don’t think that is right or who would want it any different way are free to pool their capital to start their own insurance company that makes its unique service proposition to their customers “We insure anyone regardless of their health history!”. That company will be bankrupt in a short amount of time.
Insurers including UnitedHealth Group Inc. (NYSE:UNH) and WellPoint Inc. (NYSE:WLP) struggled on the day, down as much as 2%.
UnitedHealth Group (UNH) pays a paltry 1.17% dividend and WellPoint (WLP) pays a measly 1.64% dividend.
The court hearings took place as protesters from both sides of the health-care debate gathered outside the building. Among those calling for the overturning of the mandate was tea party-favorite Rep. Michele Bachmann, the conservative Republican from Minnesota who dropped out of this year’s presidential race.
Government pits people who would ordinary not interact or have conflict with one another against each other. This is the lesson in the book/movie The Hunger Games. Go see it or read it.
Separately, the nonpartisan Urban Institute issued a study Tuesday saying that 7% of all those under age 65 would be subject to the rule requiring the purchase of insurance.
The study says 87.4 million nonelderly Americans would be exempt from the individual mandate because of their low-income or undocumented status. Of the remaining 181 million Americans under age 65, an estimated 86% have insurance, the study says.
Develop a relationship with doctors and nurses in your local area who will be willing to work in the grey market of healing before the full force of medical fascism takes effect.
