The Affordable Healthcare Act in the U.S. Supreme Court -…

On March 24 2012 14:48 .Wilsh. wrote:
I oppose obamacare or any federal health care system. Mainly because it is unconstitutional.

Quick, but important constitutional lesson:
To start off the Constitution states that in order for the federal government to have a power it must be given that power in the Constitution. This is called the enumerated powers doctrine. The enumerated powers of the Constitution are laid out in Article I Section 8. There are 18 powers (somewhat summarized):

1) Collect taxes, pay debts, and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States.
2) Borrow money. (We sadly use this one a lot today)
3) Regulate commerce with other nations and among the states.
4) Establish an uniform rule of naturalization.
5) Coin money and regulate the value.
6) Punish counterfeiting.
7) Establish post offices.
8) Promote the progress of science and useful arts. Also help inventors and authors secure right over their works. (Patients)
9) Constitute Tribunals inferior to the supreme Court.
10) Punish crimes on the high Seas.
11) Declare War.
12) Raise and support Armies.
13) Maintaining of a Navy.
14) Rules for land and naval forces.
15) Calling forth of a Militia.
16) (More Militia stuff)
17) Ruling over DC.
18) To make all laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into execution the foregoing powers.

So there are all the things that the federal government can do. I should quickly mention that Article I section 9 has more RESTRICTIONS of what the government can't do. Also the bill of rights RESTRICTS the federal government more. I really want to emphasize (especially to the Americans) that the founding fathers wrote a Constitution to restrict what the federal government can do so that it doesn't becoming to powerful and take away our rights or freedoms.

Anyways as you can see no where in the Constitution does it allow for anything like federal health care.

+ Show Spoiler +

On March 24 2012 15:33 forgottendreams wrote:


Enumerated powers are one part of the equation and a rather part of it, most of the powers for the government derived the constitution are from implied powers that were envisioned by the framers to deal with the progress of time.

Furthermore you rhetorically note there is nothing in the Constitution that would allow for health insurance because it isn't spelled out, that's really not how the Constitution works.

If you want to be realistic about it using implied powers and legal precedent which "fills" in the Constitution, health insurance can be implied through

1) Provide for General Welfare
3) Regulate Commerce Between States
18) The Congress shall have Power - To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers, and all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any Department or Officer thereof.

Legal precedent within the Commerce Clause has largely allowed for the health insurance to arise, however the individual mandate is certainly more controversial and will be the center of focus in the Court, but it would also be shortsighted to say its "unconstitutional" facially. I think it will be 5-4 with Kennedy splitting the vote in favor.... Here is some reading that summarizes quick aspects of it http://news.yahoo.com/legal-experts-see-close-win-health-reform-law-130207955.html

On March 24 2012 16:46 Voltaire wrote:
I think there should be an amendment to the Constitution for universal healthcare. I also think there should be an education amendment, but that's a long story.

I think the country needs to go back to a more Constitutionalist attitude. It's not like the Constitution can't be changed; there have been 17 additional amendments since it was ratified.

On March 24 2012 17:24 SniperSamS2 wrote:
it is through the necessary and proper and/with commerce clause in which obamacare may be constitutional. it depends how you define what is "necessary and proper" and also because "commerce" is basically everything everything related with money, congress may be able do it. it also depends on how the founding fathers thought the constitution should be interpreted. it is unreasonable to base American Fed law today on exact "word for word" of the constitution but also unreasonable to make almost everything under necessary and proper and commerce. the real question should be where the line is between what is necessary and what is just plain BS. i personally dont oppose universal health care but i do oppose obamacare which was passed when we were in debt with trillions of dollars.

CBO and JCT now estimate that the insurance coverage provisions of the ACA will have a net cost of just under $1.1 trillion over the 2012–2021 period—about $50 billion less than the agencies’ March 2011 estimate for that 10-year period (see Table 1, following the text).3 The net costs reflect:

[...]

CBO and JCT have previously estimated that the ACA will, on net, reduce budget deficits over the 2012–2021 period; that estimate of the overall budgetary impact of the ACA has not been updated.4

On March 24 2012 20:49 Mortality wrote:
Interesting that most posters approve of Obamacare but believe it to be unconstitutional. Whether or not you like the general flavor of a federal policy, I don't see how you can approve of it if it oversteps constitutional authority. Allowing authority to disregard the constitution at whim is a quick road to tyranny.

We acknowledge some discomfort with the Government’s
failure to advance any clear doctrinal principles limiting
congressional mandates that any American purchase any product
or service in interstate commerce. But to tell the truth, those
limits are not apparent to us, either because the power to require
the entry into commerce is symmetrical with the power to
prohibit or condition commercial behavior, or because we have
not yet perceived a qualitative limitation. That difficulty is
troubling, but not fatal, not least because we are interpreting the
scope of a long-established constitutional power, not
recognizing a new constitutional right. Cf. Caperton v. A.T.
Massey Coal Co., Inc., 129 S. Ct. 2252, 2272 (2009) (Roberts,
C.J., dissenting). It suffices for this case to recognize, as noted
earlier, that the health insurance market is a rather unique one,
both because virtually everyone will enter or affect it, and
because the uninsured inflict a disproportionate harm on the rest
of the market as a result of their later consumption of health care
services.

Appellants’ view that an individual cannot be subject to
Commerce Clause regulation absent voluntary, affirmative acts
that enter him or her into, or affect, the interstate market
expresses a concern for individual liberty that seems more
redolent of Due Process Clause arguments. But it has no
foundation in the Commerce Clause. The shift to the
“substantial effects” doctrine in the early twentieth century
recognized the reality that national economic problems are often
the result of millions of individuals engaging in behavior that, in
isolation, is seemingly unrelated to interstate commerce. See
Lopez, 514 U.S. at 555-56. That accepted assumption
undermines appellants’ argument; its very premise is that the
magnitude of any one individual’s actions is irrelevant; the only
thing that matters is whether the national problem Congress has
identified is one that substantially affects interstate commerce.
Indeed, in case after case, a version of appellants’ argument–that
Congress’s power to regulate national economic problems, even
those resulting from the aggregated effects of intrastate activity,
only extends to particular individuals if they have also
affirmatively engaged in interstate commerce–has been rejected
on that basis. See United States v. Wrightwood Dairy Co., 315
U.S. 110, 121 (1942) (surveying cases). Whether any
“particular person . . . is, or is not, also engaged in interstate
commerce,” the Supreme Court expressly held, is a mere
“fortuitous circumstance” that has no bearing on Congress’s
power to regulate an injury to interstate commerce. Id.

Wickard is very much in that vein. In Wickard, it mattered
not that Filburn’s annual wheat output was trivial in relation to
national production. Nor did it matter that Filburn was being
penalized for behavior that had only the most tenuous impact on
interstate commerce in of itself, since Filburn never intended the
wheat to be used for commercial purposes, never sold it, and
used it only to sustain his home farm. It was also irrelevant that
the wheat quota could compel even those farmers with no
intention of selling any wheat, in any market, to enter the
interstate market. All that mattered were the overall dynamics
of the wheat market–in other words, generalizations about likely,
future economic behavior. If farmers like Filburn all exceeded
their quotas, the mechanics of the wheat market made it
inevitable that the interstate market would be impacted–either by
the likelihood that the high price of wheat Congress was trying
to maintain would induce some unspecified number of farmers
to sell wheat at market after all, or the probability that farmers
who had enough wheat for their own use would stop buying
wheat at market. Either way, these economic forecasts–and not
any affirmative acts by people like Filburn–were enough to
sustain the law. 317 U.S. at 117, 126-28.

Cases since Wickard have minimized the significance of
any particular individual’s behavior yet further. They have
repeatedly confirmed that the actual impact of any one
individual’s conduct on interstate commerce is immaterial, so
long as a rational basis exists for believing that a congressional
enactment, as a whole, substantially relates to interstate
commerce. Raich, 545 U.S. at 17-19; Lopez, 514 U.S. at 557.
A single individual need not even be engaged in any economic
activity–i.e. not participating in any local or interstate market–so
long as the individual is engaged in some type of behavior that
would undercut a broader economic regulation if left
unregulated. Raich, 545 U.S. at 36 (Scalia, J., concurring). And
a single individual need not even be engaging in the harmful
activity that Congress deems responsible for a national
economic problem; it is enough that in general, most do. Thus,
when Congress finds that organized crime harms interstate
commerce, and that most loan sharks are part of organized
crime, Congress can regulate even those individual loan sharks
who are not part of organized crime. See Perez v. United States,
402 U.S. 146, 147, 153-57 (1971). Similarly, it is irrelevant that
an indeterminate number of healthy, uninsured persons will
never consume health care, and will therefore never affect the
interstate market. Broad regulation is an inherent feature of
Congress’s constitutional authority in this area; to regulate
complex, nationwide economic problems is to necessarily deal
in generalities. Congress reasonably determined that as a class,
the uninsured create market failures; thus, the lack of harm
attributable to any particular uninsured individual, like their lack
of overt participation in a market, is of no consequence.
That a direct requirement for most Americans to purchase
any product or service seems an intrusive exercise of legislative
power surely explains why Congress has not used this authority
before–but that seems to us a political judgment rather than a
recognition of constitutional limitations. It certainly is an
encroachment on individual liberty, but it is no more so than a
command that restaurants or hotels are obliged to serve all
customers regardless of race, that gravely ill individuals cannot
use a substance their doctors described as the only effective
palliative for excruciating pain, or that a farmer cannot grow
enough wheat to support his own family.32 The right to be free
from federal regulation is not absolute, and yields to the
imperative that Congress be free to forge national solutions to
national problems, no matter how local–or seemingly
passive–their individual origins. See Heart of Atlanta Motel,
Inc. v. United States, 379 U.S. 241, 258-59 (1964).
For the foregoing reasons, we affirm the decision of the
district court.

Awesome.

Because the CBO recently put out a statement that Obamacare will cost $50 billion less than previously thought.

On March 24 2012 21:58 DeepElemBlues wrote:


Or, the CBO recently put out an estimate that Obamacare will cost 1.76 trillion dollars more than previously thought.

But hey, you say potato 50 billion less, I say potahto 1.76 trillion more, not a big deal right?

On March 24 2012 21:16 paralleluniverse wrote:
I'm not a lawyer, but this is an extremely interesting read.

This is part of the ruling of a Republican judge who found that Obamacare was constitutional, and the only ruling in support of it that was authored by a Republican judge.

http://www.cadc.uscourts.gov/internet/opinions.nsf/055C0349A6E85D7A8525794200579735/$file/11-5047-1340594.pdf

On March 24 2012 20:49 Mortality wrote:
Interesting that most posters approve of Obamacare but believe it to be unconstitutional. Whether or not you like the general flavor of a federal policy, I don't see how you can approve of it if it oversteps constitutional authority. Allowing authority to disregard the constitution at whim is a quick road to tyranny.

On March 24 2012 22:41 Stratos_speAr wrote:


The thing is that, like others have said, there have been countless questionable laws passed in recent decades when it comes to constitutionality, so it's not something that's adhered to very strictly anymore.

On March 24 2012 13:06 liberal wrote:

I already explained this to you. Did you not see my post?

It's all about labeling. Unfunded liabilities are not labeled as debt by US accounting, they are labeled "transfer payments." The current unfunded liability of social security, medicare, and prescription drug liability, is well over $100 trillion. These numbers do represent future costs which must be paid, but they are not defined as national debt.

According to GAAP (Generally Accepted Accounting Principles) which the US requires of every company or business, unfunded liabilities must be accounted as debt. But the US govt. decides to have a separate standard for their own accounting, because it benefits them.