# 6th Circuit Court of Appeals upholds Affordable Care Act **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [June 30, 2011, 12:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/6th-circuit-court-of-appeals-upholds-affordable-care-act/587331 "2011-06-30T00:00:13Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 6\ **Page:** 6
**Author:** ![Simplicio](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c37758/32.png) [@Simplicio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Simplicio)\ **Post date:** [July 6, 2011, 9:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/6th-circuit-court-of-appeals-upholds-affordable-care-act/587331/101 "2011-07-06T21:41:45Z")
> [@Bricker](#): > > How, apart from printing and minting physical currency, does the government “create” money? Be specific, please. The federal reserve buys financial instruments from banks. The money for doing this isn’t raised from taxes or borrowed, the fed just says it exists and then transfers it to banks. On a more philosophical level, all money, even that created by fractional reserve banking of private banks, is created by the gov’t since its backed by the guarantee of federal law, but thats admittedly more debatable. ---
**Author:** ![Simplicio](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c37758/32.png) [@Simplicio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Simplicio)\ **Post date:** [July 6, 2011, 10:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/6th-circuit-court-of-appeals-upholds-affordable-care-act/587331/102 "2011-07-06T22:06:46Z")
> [@Bricker](#): > > Yes, that’s true. But each of those are entitlements to a specific class of person. The VA, especially, is providing medical care as a job benefit for the military. Medicare and Medicaid require qualification, and frankly I’m not wild about them, either. > > But none of them transforms health care into an entitlement you get by simply breathing. OK, but they’re entitlements that protect the people most likely to be “dying on the streets”, which if I’m following the thread of the argument correctly, was the original statement. But if your not wild about Medicare/Medicaid, what would you suggest we do about people that can’t afford healthcare? Whether you think its a “right” or not is kind of meaningless IMHO, at the end of the day I don’t think the US populace is willing to let the old and poor go untreated in large numbers simply because they’re unable to pay. Whether this is because people believe in a ‘right’ to healthcare, out of simple altruism or out of self interest (since even wealthy people can end up poor, and even if you plan to be rich and insured your whole life, its still in your interest to not have poor people wandering around with drug resistant TB and STDs, or trying to drive taxis and operate heavy machinary while periodically passing out from various ailments.) ---
**Author:** ![Bricker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/977dab/32.png) [@Bricker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bricker)\ **Post date:** [July 7, 2011, 12:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/6th-circuit-court-of-appeals-upholds-affordable-care-act/587331/103 "2011-07-07T00:28:29Z")
> [@Simplicio](#): > > The federal reserve buys financial instruments from banks. The money for doing this isn’t raised from taxes or borrowed, the fed just says it exists and then transfers it to banks. I admit I am not an expert in this aera by a long shot, but inasmuch as the Federal Reserve makes a profit every year, it doesn’t seem necessary or plausible to me that your explanation is correct. Do you have a cite? > [@](#): > > On a more philosophical level, all money, even that created by fractional reserve banking of private banks, is created by the gov’t since its backed by the guarantee of federal law, but thats admittedly more debatable. This is certainly a true statement… but I don’t agree it amounts to creating money. It’s creating debt. ---
**Author:** ![Recovering\_Republican](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/d2c977/32.png) [@Recovering\_Republican](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Recovering_Republican)\ **Post date:** [July 7, 2011, 12:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/6th-circuit-court-of-appeals-upholds-affordable-care-act/587331/104 "2011-07-07T00:45:15Z")
> [@yorick73](#): > > Quite a bit of this is nothing more than misleading talking points. No doubt there are serious problems but it doesn’t help the argument by citing misleading numbers: Except they aren’t misleading, they’re a disgrace. [quote] this is due in large part on the definition of live birth. Many countries don’t report births under a certain weight, gestation time, or babies that die within the first 24 hours. In addition, the use of fertility drugs, teen smoking and drug use increase the number of premature births. [quote] Many countries don’t, but the industrialized ones do. So, yeah, maybe that gets you off the hook for Cuba having a lower rate than we do, but not Germany. > [@](#): > > Subtract out fatal injuries and homicides and we have one of the highest rates of life expectancy. No we don’t. first, our accident rates aren’t really that much worse than anyone elses. Secondly, homicides are such a small percentage of the pie they don’t count. > [@](#): > > This one is dubious at best. There have been many critiques of the original report that suggest that the authors did not take into account or weigh contributing factors (i.e. not being able to afford the mortgage thus also defaulting on the $1000.00 medical bill.) But yet the REpublicans insisted on reforming bankruptcy laws on the basis that people were ducking out on their medical bills. > [@](#): > > Subtract out 10 million illegals, 18 million middle to high income earners who choose not to purchase insurance, and the 14 million who are eligible for government programs but are not signed up and you will get a more accurate number. Also, a large percent of uninsured are under 34 and may be gambling that they won’t get sick. The reasons WHY they are uninsured is unimportant. The fact is they are while every other industrialized country covers everyone, and spends a lot less money doing it. So why do we keep this horrible system? ---
**Author:** ![Simplicio](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c37758/32.png) [@Simplicio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Simplicio)\ **Post date:** [July 7, 2011, 1:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/6th-circuit-court-of-appeals-upholds-affordable-care-act/587331/105 "2011-07-07T01:36:18Z")
> [@Bricker](#): > > I admit I am not an expert in this aera by a long shot, but inasmuch as the Federal Reserve makes a profit every year, it doesn’t seem necessary or plausible to me that your explanation is correct. > > Do you have a cite? Yea, sorry about the [wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Money_creation) cite, but Ron Paul has apparently ruined the internet for googling basic economic 101 topics, as federal reserve conspiracy theories swamp the google results. > [@](#): > > In economics, money creation is the process by which the money supply of a country or a monetary zone (such as the Eurozone) is expanded. There are two principal stages of money creation. First, the central bank can introduce or issue new money into the economy (termed ‘expansionary monetary policy’). A central bank usually injects new money into the economy by purchasing financial assets. Second, the new money introduced by the central bank is multiplied by commercial banks through fractional reserve banking, expanding the amount of broad money (i.e. cash plus demand deposits) in the economy by making loans. This is actually pretty much the only way the gov’t directly creates money, the actual physical currency is a small fraction of the money the fed creates via monetary policy. Especially now, as the Fed has been doing this sort of thing at record levels in an attempt to get the economy moving and banks lending. > [@](#): > > This is certainly a true statement… but I don’t agree it amounts to creating money. It’s creating debt. If someone borrows money from a bank to buy your house, when they give you that money, do you put it in a seperate category from the rest of the money you have and call it “someone elses debt”? Its pretty standard to refer to money created by bank loans as part of the money supply, (that actually wasn’t the part of the statement you quoted that I was referring to as “debatable”). Here’s a [Cecil Adams](http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/719/how-much-money-is-there) column that explains the same thing a different way. ---
**Author:** ![yorick73](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/b5a626/32.png) [@yorick73](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/yorick73)\ **Post date:** [July 7, 2011, 5:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/6th-circuit-court-of-appeals-upholds-affordable-care-act/587331/106 "2011-07-07T17:37:21Z")
> [@Recovering\_Republican](#): > > Many countries don’t, but the industrialized ones do. So, yeah, maybe that gets you off the hook for Cuba having a lower rate than we do, but not Germany. Whoops! And here I was thinking that Austria, Switzerland, France, Norway and, yes, Germany were industrialized. My mistake. :rolleyes: > [@Recovering\_Republican](#): > > No we don’t. first, our accident rates aren’t really that much worse than anyone elses. Secondly, homicides are such a small percentage of the pie they don’t count. Really? Because just adjusting for fatal injuries moves the US to near the top of the list for life expectancy. Also, we need to take into account our higher infant mortality rate…discussed in my previous post. > [@Recovering\_Republican](#): > > The reasons WHY they are uninsured is unimportant. The fact is they are while every other industrialized country covers everyone, and spends a lot less money doing it. > > So why do we keep this horrible system? Sigh, so now the problem is not why people are uninsured but just the mere fact that they are. Listen, I have no interest in debating these numbers in this thread. My point, as I explained in post #84, is that all of the numbers you list as “facts” are debatable at best and BS at worst. This should be evident from even a cursory google search. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/6th-circuit-court-of-appeals-upholds-affordable-care-act/587331.md?page=5)