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This topic is not about the American Invasion of Iraq. Stop. - Page 23 |
On March 28 2012 15:06 tree.hugger wrote:I should remember to not argue with people on the internet. I was halfway through writing a long post, and then I realized, it wasn't going to convince anyone. All of you who've made it this far already have opinions, and internet opinions never change, so what's the point? 
Actually i might be convinced by it, do post it.
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Lord_J
Kenya1085 Posts
My problem with the individual mandate is that it treats health care as a monolith. Sure, I'll grant that it's inevitable that at some point I'll inevitably consume some health care services, and that it is therefore reasonable that I pay into some scheme (insurance or otherwise) which includes coverage for those particular health care services which I might inevitably consume.
However, there are a great many health care services that I and many others would never consume under any circumstances for reasons of personal preference and/or conviction, and there are others that we might consume, if and only if our decisions were influenced by the moral hazard of insurance, and with respect to those services or, specifically, health insurance to the extent that it includes coverage for those services, the government's arguments about the health care industry ring hollow. Perhaps the better constitutional solution would be to uphold the mandate on its face, but overturn any regulatory definition of "qualifying health insurance" which was broad enough to include coverage of services the use of which might be subject to personal preference. However, such an approach would call for courts to perform a kind of administrative micromanagement that they generally prefer to avoid (e.g., Chevron U.S.A. Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc., 467 U.S. 837 (1984)), and not without good reason, as a matter of institutional competence.
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On March 28 2012 15:10 BluePanther wrote:Show nested quote +On March 28 2012 15:06 tree.hugger wrote:I should remember to not argue with people on the internet. I was halfway through writing a long post, and then I realized, it wasn't going to convince anyone. All of you who've made it this far already have opinions, and internet opinions never change, so what's the point? Because, at least from my understanding, the conversation on this is actually being held by rather intelligent people.
Intelligent people because everybody else is the dummie, not me. I can't believe you hold that opinion, for mine is logical and right.
Individual mandate goes too far in asserting the federal government's control. I'm not going to go farther than what's already been discussed at the Supreme Court. Hoping they find it unconstitutional, and just as unconstitutional as mandating the purchase of a cell phone or broccoli by passing a law.
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On March 28 2012 16:01 Danglars wrote:Show nested quote +On March 28 2012 15:10 BluePanther wrote:On March 28 2012 15:06 tree.hugger wrote:I should remember to not argue with people on the internet. I was halfway through writing a long post, and then I realized, it wasn't going to convince anyone. All of you who've made it this far already have opinions, and internet opinions never change, so what's the point? Because, at least from my understanding, the conversation on this is actually being held by rather intelligent people. Intelligent people because everybody else is the dummie, not me. I can't believe you hold that opinion, for mine is logical and right.
?
That was a compliment to the people talking in this thread in the past 3 pages or so, not an insult. Most of the conversations were about rather nuanced things.
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On March 28 2012 15:06 tree.hugger wrote:I should remember to not argue with people on the internet. I was halfway through writing a long post, and then I realized, it wasn't going to convince anyone. All of you who've made it this far already have opinions, and internet opinions never change, so what's the point?
One always has to remember that while making an argument on a public forum that there are those of us that are either undecided or open to new ideas and enjoy reading intelligent discussion from both sides on issues. We don't always post mainly because, "Frankly I'm not sure" isn't exactly content. 
I also like to think that by posting you're not only doing it because you are trying to convince someone else, but because that writing down your ideas and thoughts on an issue can help clarify them just as reading others opinions does the same.
In short, moar posting plox!
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BluePanther, I was trying to bring up a twist on what you said on intelligent people. I mean there are different means of evaluating an intelligent person. Sure, he or she may possess a bachelor's degree, a PhD, or be a critically acclaimed author, engineer, or artist. The exchange of
1. What's the purpose of arguing and writing thought-out posts on this subject if nobody will change their mind based on reading it?
2. The conversation is surprisingly being waged by intelligent people.
Does your definition of intelligence bestow the ability to be argued out of a believed position? Idk, it was an observation.
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On March 28 2012 16:01 Danglars wrote:Show nested quote +On March 28 2012 15:10 BluePanther wrote:On March 28 2012 15:06 tree.hugger wrote:I should remember to not argue with people on the internet. I was halfway through writing a long post, and then I realized, it wasn't going to convince anyone. All of you who've made it this far already have opinions, and internet opinions never change, so what's the point? Because, at least from my understanding, the conversation on this is actually being held by rather intelligent people. Intelligent people because everybody else is the dummie, not me. I can't believe you hold that opinion, for mine is logical and right. Individual mandate goes too far in asserting the federal government's control. I'm not going to go farther than what's already been discussed at the Supreme Court. Hoping they find it unconstitutional, and just as unconstitutional as mandating the purchase of a cell phone or broccoli by passing a law.
It is quite clear this is nothing like a cell phone or brocolli. Cell phones and broccoli are not payment for another market everyone is a part of.
It goes like this; the government can regulate how you pay for something once you have entered a market. Hell, it can then regulate all sorts of behavior in that market.
Pro-mandate folks say you entered the healthcare market when you were born and thus acquired your health, or if you'd like, everyone alive is just in it. Healthcare is unique in that way. As such, the government could force you to buy private health insurance so long as you are in possession of your health and not exempt (Amish, Christian Scientists), just like they can force you to buy private car insurance for being in possession of\using a car. Kagan raised the exempt groups specifically when she said they'd have a better case if they were representing an abnormal group that refuses medicine and the medical practice.
Anti-mandate lawyers tried to say car insurance (admitting forcing people to buy private car insurance isn't unconstitutional if the federal government decided to do it, not the states) and health insurance are different because you can avoid car insurance by not buying a car. Sure, you could also avoid being alive and in possession of your life if you really wanted to. You could join a religious group with an exemption. This objection does nothing other than further demonstrate the uniqueness of the healthcare market. Everyone is in it. Pointing out it is unique doesn't constitute an argument against using commerce clause power.
There is no real dangerous precedent.
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On March 28 2012 17:02 Danglars wrote:
BluePanther, I was trying to bring up a twist on what you said on intelligent people. I mean there are different means of evaluating an intelligent person. Sure, he or she may possess a bachelor's degree, a PhD, or be a critically acclaimed author, engineer, or artist. The exchange of
1. What's the purpose of arguing and writing thought-out posts on this subject if nobody will change their mind based on reading it?
2. The conversation is surprisingly being waged by intelligent people.
Does your definition of intelligence bestow the ability to be argued out of a believed position? Idk, it was an observation.
The sole purpose I ever engage in debate is to test my own theories/understanding. I want to see if someone can point out a weakness or explain a topic in a manner that makes me rethink my position. And when you talk with intelligent people, they make you think very hard. I rewrote what I said about Citizens United like 10 times after Daunt forced me to go back and read it again. I still think I'm right, but I had to adjust my stance on it slightly because of a point that he made (which was correct).
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Personally, I'm in favor of the tax and voucher solution to the problem. It fixes nearly every issue with health care in one go while maintaining private choice and a free market.
And while Repubs might be vehemently against the tax increase, the truth is that the avg person is already spending that money already. It just shifts your insurance payments from being to private companies to the government, who then ensures they cover everyone, thereby reducing the overal money spent on health care due to poor individuals being able to obtain preventative care. In the end, citizens end up spending less and getting more, and lose absolutely no freedoms.
All it takes is for someone to explain to them that a tax increase is in their own best financial interest on this one.
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Aotearoa39261 Posts
On March 28 2012 15:06 tree.hugger wrote:I should remember to not argue with people on the internet. I was halfway through writing a long post, and then I realized, it wasn't going to convince anyone. All of you who've made it this far already have opinions, and internet opinions never change, so what's the point?
Nooo I needed an opinion to paraphrase to sound intelligent.
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On March 28 2012 18:41 BluePanther wrote:
Personally, I'm in favor of the tax and voucher solution to the problem. It fixes nearly every issue with health care in one go while maintaining private choice and a free market.
And while Repubs might be vehemently against the tax increase, the truth is that the avg person is already spending that money already. It just shifts your insurance payments from being to private companies to the government, who then ensures they cover everyone, thereby reducing the overal money spent on health care due to poor individuals being able to obtain preventative care. In the end, citizens end up spending less and getting more, and lose absolutely no freedoms.
All it takes is for someone to explain to them that a tax increase is in their own best financial interest on this one.
I'd say, it just shifts your insurance payments from being to private companies to being to the government, who then adds 2 levels of bureaucracies to process them, thereby drastically increases the overall money spent on health care.
I really don't buy this notion that government purchasing insurance for poor people will suddenly translate into huge cost savings as more of the poor obtain preventative care. Yes, vouchers are a bit easier to stomach. It increases the quality of options when companies have to fight for the money (like they do now, in a sense). It's worked before in school choice and quality ... making the schools compete to provide the better service instead of automatically getting students no matter how bad they teach.
Now I'm not here saying the current relationship between insurance providers, health care providers, and health care customers is even close to being in a good situation. Government regulations forcing insurance providers to include services that the buyers may not want. Frivolous lawsuits making health care all-around just that much more expensive, due to the sheer magnitude of payouts they may be forced into (Man comes in for 20$ procedure, but could sue for one million dollars if it goes wrong, and then the cost of the procedure includes a distributed risk assessment and prices go up). The entire concept of the negotiation of prices taking place between two parties apart from the consumer (People spending other people's money never spend it as well as a person spending his own money, wiki link. Government standard payouts for Medicare remaining the same regardless of the actual cost of the procedure.
That's kinda a stripped view of the conservative manifesto in insurance reform / health care reform / medicare reform. I don't think I'm going to convince anybody that the aforementioned are the real underlying problems with the rising cost of health care, and the inability of poor people to afford it. Greater minds than me have debated that one for quite some time now. I'll just go back to vehemently opposing tax increases and claiming, "No, it ought not be so!"
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I can't believe this case has a (perfectly good) chance of winning. 2 years ago everyone thought the people arguing for unconstitutionality were nuts who even the conservatives on the court wouldn't take seriously. There is plenty of reasonable ground to oppose the law on policy grounds, but there's no constitutionality argument to be made, other than some very extreme versions that would make half of what the federal government does unconstitutional. The federal government can't make you buy things? It tells everyone that if they buy a house, they'll pay less taxes than if they don't. Anyone who doesn't buy a house gets penalized with higher taxes. No one even briefly thought this was unconstitutional. But saying you have to pay a penalty if you don't buy health insurance is? It just doesn't make any sense at all, and I think on some level (almost) all constitutional law experts know that.
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On March 28 2012 17:06 Romantic wrote:Show nested quote +On March 28 2012 16:01 Danglars wrote:On March 28 2012 15:10 BluePanther wrote:On March 28 2012 15:06 tree.hugger wrote:I should remember to not argue with people on the internet. I was halfway through writing a long post, and then I realized, it wasn't going to convince anyone. All of you who've made it this far already have opinions, and internet opinions never change, so what's the point? Because, at least from my understanding, the conversation on this is actually being held by rather intelligent people. Intelligent people because everybody else is the dummie, not me. I can't believe you hold that opinion, for mine is logical and right. Individual mandate goes too far in asserting the federal government's control. I'm not going to go farther than what's already been discussed at the Supreme Court. Hoping they find it unconstitutional, and just as unconstitutional as mandating the purchase of a cell phone or broccoli by passing a law. It is quite clear this is nothing like a cell phone or brocolli. Cell phones and broccoli are not payment for another market everyone is a part of. It goes like this; the government can regulate how you pay for something once you have entered a market. Hell, it can then regulate all sorts of behavior in that market. Pro-mandate folks say you entered the healthcare market when you were born and thus acquired your health, or if you'd like, everyone alive is just in it. Healthcare is unique in that way. As such, the government could force you to buy private health insurance so long as you are in possession of your health and not exempt (Amish, Christian Scientists), just like they can force you to buy private car insurance for being in possession of\using a car. Kagan raised the exempt groups specifically when she said they'd have a better case if they were representing an abnormal group that refuses medicine and the medical practice. Anti-mandate lawyers tried to say car insurance (admitting forcing people to buy private car insurance isn't unconstitutional if the federal government decided to do it, not the states) and health insurance are different because you can avoid car insurance by not buying a car. Sure, you could also avoid being alive and in possession of your life if you really wanted to. You could join a religious group with an exemption. This objection does nothing other than further demonstrate the uniqueness of the healthcare market. Everyone is in it. Pointing out it is unique doesn't constitute an argument against using commerce clause power. There is no real dangerous precedent.
Yes but if everyone is born into the market then it still raises the question of what limits on federal power remain. Since virtually everything you do or don't do impacts health then you could argue that the federal government can mandate anything under the aegis of health care regulation. If so then it would be an invalid interpretation of the constitution since it would violate the simple fact that there are limits on federal power.
That's where the broccoli argument comes in. Broccoli is good for health and impacts health care therefore government can mandate its consumption as part of its unlimited power to regulate healthcare from cradle to grave.
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On March 28 2012 22:05 JonnyBNoHo wrote:Show nested quote +On March 28 2012 17:06 Romantic wrote:On March 28 2012 16:01 Danglars wrote:On March 28 2012 15:10 BluePanther wrote:On March 28 2012 15:06 tree.hugger wrote:I should remember to not argue with people on the internet. I was halfway through writing a long post, and then I realized, it wasn't going to convince anyone. All of you who've made it this far already have opinions, and internet opinions never change, so what's the point? Because, at least from my understanding, the conversation on this is actually being held by rather intelligent people. Intelligent people because everybody else is the dummie, not me. I can't believe you hold that opinion, for mine is logical and right. Individual mandate goes too far in asserting the federal government's control. I'm not going to go farther than what's already been discussed at the Supreme Court. Hoping they find it unconstitutional, and just as unconstitutional as mandating the purchase of a cell phone or broccoli by passing a law. It is quite clear this is nothing like a cell phone or brocolli. Cell phones and broccoli are not payment for another market everyone is a part of. It goes like this; the government can regulate how you pay for something once you have entered a market. Hell, it can then regulate all sorts of behavior in that market. Pro-mandate folks say you entered the healthcare market when you were born and thus acquired your health, or if you'd like, everyone alive is just in it. Healthcare is unique in that way. As such, the government could force you to buy private health insurance so long as you are in possession of your health and not exempt (Amish, Christian Scientists), just like they can force you to buy private car insurance for being in possession of\using a car. Kagan raised the exempt groups specifically when she said they'd have a better case if they were representing an abnormal group that refuses medicine and the medical practice. Anti-mandate lawyers tried to say car insurance (admitting forcing people to buy private car insurance isn't unconstitutional if the federal government decided to do it, not the states) and health insurance are different because you can avoid car insurance by not buying a car. Sure, you could also avoid being alive and in possession of your life if you really wanted to. You could join a religious group with an exemption. This objection does nothing other than further demonstrate the uniqueness of the healthcare market. Everyone is in it. Pointing out it is unique doesn't constitute an argument against using commerce clause power. There is no real dangerous precedent. Yes but if everyone is born into the market then it still raises the question of what limits on federal power remain. Since virtually everything you do or don't do impacts health then you could argue that the federal government can mandate anything under the aegis of health care regulation. If so then it would be an invalid interpretation of the constitution since it would violate the simple fact that there are limits on federal power. That's where the broccoli argument comes in. Broccoli is good for health and impacts health care therefore government can mandate its consumption as part of its unlimited power to regulate healthcare from cradle to grave.
The founders wrote a standard for when something becomes a federal issue (interstate commerce) that now, due to technological advances in communication, transport, finance, and so forth, means that basically all economic regulation is a federal issue. I'd argue that was smart, since it means that federal power grows naturally to fit the need. You (and Alito, and others) might think it's bad because you like states rights. But that's not an argument that it's not in the constitution. In fact, the supreme court has ruled that the constitution does indeed give the federal government basically unlimited power in this area over and over and over again. It's only reconsidering now because it doesn't like what the federal government is doing with that power.
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On March 28 2012 15:39 Lord_J wrote:
However, there are a great many health care services that I and many others would never consume under any circumstances for reasons of personal preference and/or conviction, and there are others that we might consume, if and only if our decisions were influenced by the moral hazard of insurance, and with respect to those services or, specifically, health insurance to the extent that it includes coverage for those services, the government's arguments about the health care industry ring hollow. Perhaps the better constitutional solution would be to uphold the mandate on its face, but overturn any regulatory definition of "qualifying health insurance" which was broad enough to include coverage of services the use of which might be subject to personal preference. However, such an approach would call for courts to perform a kind of administrative micromanagement that they generally prefer to avoid (e.g., Chevron U.S.A. Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc., 467 U.S. 837 (1984)), and not without good reason, as a matter of institutional competence.
All services are subject to personal preference. There are many people in this country who completely reject the use of vaccinations, surgery, antibiotics, etc as a religious or naturalistic preference.
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On March 23 2012 15:48 {CC}StealthBlue wrote:
Medicare for every U.S citizen.
Not surprisingly, Monday’s debut of Supreme Court argument over so-called “individual mandate” requiring everyone to buy health insurance revolved around epistemological niceties such as the meaning of a “fee” or a “tax.”
Behind all this is the brute fact that if the Court decides the individual mandate is an unconstitutional extension of federal authority, the entire law starts unraveling.
But with a bit of political jujitsu, the president could turn any such defeat into a victory for a single-payer healthcare system – Medicare for all.
...
Source
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On March 28 2012 17:06 Romantic wrote:Show nested quote +On March 28 2012 16:01 Danglars wrote:On March 28 2012 15:10 BluePanther wrote:On March 28 2012 15:06 tree.hugger wrote:I should remember to not argue with people on the internet. I was halfway through writing a long post, and then I realized, it wasn't going to convince anyone. All of you who've made it this far already have opinions, and internet opinions never change, so what's the point? Because, at least from my understanding, the conversation on this is actually being held by rather intelligent people. Intelligent people because everybody else is the dummie, not me. I can't believe you hold that opinion, for mine is logical and right. Individual mandate goes too far in asserting the federal government's control. I'm not going to go farther than what's already been discussed at the Supreme Court. Hoping they find it unconstitutional, and just as unconstitutional as mandating the purchase of a cell phone or broccoli by passing a law. It is quite clear this is nothing like a cell phone or brocolli. Cell phones and broccoli are not payment for another market everyone is a part of. It goes like this; the government can regulate how you pay for something once you have entered a market. Hell, it can then regulate all sorts of behavior in that market. Pro-mandate folks say you entered the healthcare market when you were born and thus acquired your health, or if you'd like, everyone alive is just in it. Healthcare is unique in that way. As such, the government could force you to buy private health insurance so long as you are in possession of your health and not exempt (Amish, Christian Scientists), just like they can force you to buy private car insurance for being in possession of\using a car. Kagan raised the exempt groups specifically when she said they'd have a better case if they were representing an abnormal group that refuses medicine and the medical practice. Anti-mandate lawyers tried to say car insurance (admitting forcing people to buy private car insurance isn't unconstitutional if the federal government decided to do it, not the states) and health insurance are different because you can avoid car insurance by not buying a car. Sure, you could also avoid being alive and in possession of your life if you really wanted to. You could join a religious group with an exemption. This objection does nothing other than further demonstrate the uniqueness of the healthcare market. Everyone is in it. Pointing out it is unique doesn't constitute an argument against using commerce clause power. There is no real dangerous precedent.
I would agree with you. I like the way Justice Ginsburg explained it, at least I think it was her, I listened to most of the audio for the oral arguments. The government already forces people to pay for medicare and other things as Justice Breyer talked about, we already subsidize a large percent of the population for services we may never use or at least won't use for a very long time. The minimum coverage provision (individual mandate) just does this in a different way, to penalize people as an incentive for not purchasing insurance. Justice Sotomayor talked about this being an issue of timing, we are simply asking people to enter into the market before they need it, because its unrealistic for people to buy insurance at the time they need it and making the rest of us pay for it, it makes sense to have people purchase it before they get sick. To me the broccoli argument is ridiculous, we do not have a national crisis in access to purchase broccoli, and as Breyer spoke about, we do not have a national crisis in people buying cars and many people will never buy cars. We do have a national crisis with regards to health care, and in order to access healthcare you need health insurance. People who don't have insurance are making it even harder for themselves and others to get into the market because the costs just get higher as a result. Congress has the power to solve these national problems. The one thing that seemed unclear was what the limit was to this power, I didn't think the Solicitor General did a very good job explaining what that was.
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This is a problem that has been created by government regulation. The problem is that government forces the market to pay the services for people who can't pay. Because it is a problem of their own creation, because they are imposing a cost on private companies, they should do precisely what they do in similar cases: they should subsidize the costs that is being imposed on the market.
Instead of providing the market with the means to actually adhere to the government regulation by directly subsidizing it, they are forcing a group of citizens to indirectly subsidize it by purchasing the product. They are forcing mostly young and healthy people to purchase a product to reduce the costs to the rest of the market which has been broken by government regulation.
The argument that this is necessary because even young people will need health care at some point isn't valid, because the harm that comes to the market is NOT from people consuming health care without insurance... The harm that comes is people consuming health care without insurance and then defaulting on the cost that they owe. Having insurance decreases the probability of default, but the lack of insurance does not cause direct harm to the market even after consumption, and that's an important distinction to make.
If this was just about providing catastrophic insurance to everyone to prevent these defaults that actually harm the market, it would be a completely different argument than forcing people to purchase a wide-ranging product with the express purpose of subsidizing the costs of other people. The mandated purchase of insurance extends beyond catastrophic coverage and forces people to pay for products which they will neither consume nor are actually harming the market even when consumed without insurance.
On March 28 2012 18:43 Plexa wrote:Show nested quote +On March 28 2012 15:06 tree.hugger wrote:I should remember to not argue with people on the internet. I was halfway through writing a long post, and then I realized, it wasn't going to convince anyone. All of you who've made it this far already have opinions, and internet opinions never change, so what's the point? Nooo I needed an opinion to paraphrase to sound intelligent.
lol...
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Hmm interesting... I got a scholarship to Harvard for 2013 I want to see how this shit will pan out.
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On March 28 2012 23:34 ZeaL. wrote:Show nested quote +On March 23 2012 15:48 {CC}StealthBlue wrote:
Medicare for every U.S citizen. Show nested quote +Not surprisingly, Monday’s debut of Supreme Court argument over so-called “individual mandate” requiring everyone to buy health insurance revolved around epistemological niceties such as the meaning of a “fee” or a “tax.”
Behind all this is the brute fact that if the Court decides the individual mandate is an unconstitutional extension of federal authority, the entire law starts unraveling.
But with a bit of political jujitsu, the president could turn any such defeat into a victory for a single-payer healthcare system – Medicare for all.
... Source
For that to happen, Democrats need to control both branches of Congress and the White House. It will be interesting to look at fine-level election data come mid November ... I'm predicting our new maps will have a median congressional district with PVI close to R+3. Which basically means Dems will need a result like 2008 just to get a small majority in the House.
So that's a long way off.
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EPT
