Great!
It is the last part I am not sure you have adequately explained.
Why is me paying for national parks a wise role for the federal government but me paying for healthcare is not? Or education?
Put another way, why is the country’s healthcare not a proper role for the federal government?
Hey Bricker, I think I’m clear on some of your general principles on the role of federalism and similar matters, but I’m curious as to your views on a couple questions.
So you got nothing.
Roger that.
Maybe not here (though there are some), but the ones in government - you know, the ones with all the power - sure seem to be. At the least, they, like Bricker, don’t seem to feel the urge to improve upon what we had before the ACA on anything but the state level (which, as pointed out, is impractical, but I’m sure that’s a ready excuse to eliminate Medicare and Medicaid too).
Sorry, but false equivalence.
Military, roads, justice, all provide a benefit to everyone. With entitlements and something like the ACA, the benefit is being directly provided to a specific person (or persons), for the common good. I, for example, would not have received a thin dime from the government for any insurance purchased under the ACA. Nevertheless, I’d have been taxed to provide those thin dimes to others.
Now mind you, I’ve asserted in another post that the fact that the situations are not equivalent doesn’t mean that there isn’t an underlying similarity between them.
Come on, you can’t possibly believe this. You can’t possibly believe that the outcome of a complex and multifactorial election can be used as a proxy for public opinion on a single, individual subject.
And even if you do: even if 100% of the population was opposed to the ACA, still this would tell us little about the population’s opinion of the underlying issue: whether the government ought to use public resources to reduce death and disability. Some portion of opposition to the ACA was rooted in flat pig ignorance about what it does (to be fair, some portion of the support for it is also rooted in ignorance).
The question of whether The People, overall, think health care ought to be a government responsibility is still an open one. We’re all going to find out the real answer over the next few years. It would be nice if the folks who think like you would be as honest as you are about your beliefs - it would get us to the answer faster. But so it goes.
It can, and I think it should, but it can’t do it in isolation without federal partnership. Single payer didn’t fail in Vermont because Vermont is tiny, it failed for a host of reasons including opposition by the medical lobby and the insurance lobby, the prospect of increased taxes and lack of immediate savings which voters failed to reconcile with savings on private insurance payments, and most of all it failed because of lack of an adequate level of federal cooperation and cost sharing.
It’s easy for conservatives to say “let the liberal states try it” and then watch hopefully for it to fail, which it likely would, but as I keep saying it was successful in every single province in Canada where there was strong federal collaboration and the feds lay down national rules and standards and cost-sharing formulas, and the provinces could either opt in or not, as they saw fit. They all opted in.
This is particularly crucial in the US because, like it or not, and argue about the constitution til you’re blue in the face, but that ship has sailed and the argument about federal involvement in health care has been moot for many generations. Today the federal government is a very major player in national health care. The feds run the entire Medicare system, the VA, and now the ACA; they are the major contributors to Medicaid funding; and they subsidize traditional employer-sponsored private insurance through the tax code to the tune of more than half a trillion dollars a year. And even where state taxes are relatively high, the feds still get the vast lion’s share of income tax dollars.
So when I hear conservatives say “let the states do it on their own” with the strident emphasis that the federal government must not be involved, what I hear is “I support any kind of compassionate universal health care plan as long as it cannot and does not actually work.”
Jesus Christ man, it’s the same answer!
This is a strange answer, because I could say:
Health insurance is provided by the states with the federal government’s involvement limited to its spending power.
Not quite. He’s been pretty clear that he would support enabling legislation to such an amendment if presented with it as a fait accompli. Less clear about whether he would be in favor of ratification, or whether he would work in support of or in opposition to, such ratification efforts in his state.
I suspect the latter, though.
Why would you suspect the latter? I would suspect the former.
But it’s not. Its taxing power was the basis of the purchase mandate.
It wasn’t quite that simple. John Robarts, Conserative Premier of Ontario, was sceptical about medicare when Liberal Prime Minister Pearson proposed it, but the tax math strongly persuaded him to opt in: Ontarians would pay federal taxes to support medicare whether or not Ontario opted in, so if Ontario didn’t opt in, they’d essentially be subsiding health care for all other Canadians, but not getting the benefit of it themselves. He was on record as saying that was a deciding feature for him. (Exactly the opposite political approach to those US states that declined the Medicare extra coverage under the ACA, if you think about it: he put benefit to his constituents ahead of his own ideological views, compared to those governors who have put their ideology ahead of benefits to their constituents.)
Bricker, why do you say that health care is not a proper function for the federal government, when the Supreme Court has upheld the ACA as within Congress’ power?
Why do you say that a constitutional amendment is needed before you would support it?
What does a constitutional amendment add to the federal legitimacy in health care that it doesn’t already have under King v Burwell?
Yes, but its taxing power is why I have to pay more for gas.
No one has debunked me.
There’s no question California can force their citizens to pay for such a plan because states have plenary legislative reach. I’m curious to know if you know what this phrase means, now.
There’s also no question that the feds can force people to pay for such a plan using their taxing power. In my opinion, this is an unwise exercise of the taxing power and an unwise view of the reach of the taxing power. But it’s settled law, now.
So if you think you debunked me, it can only be by somehow debunking an opinion that this is unwise. How did you debunk that opinion? Can you link to the debunking post?
What answer?
What is the difference between our tax money paying for a national park and our tax money paying for healthcare that makes Bricker think the park money is just swell but the healthcare money is a bridge too far?
NOT because he likes one and not the other but the fundamental role of government at issue here. It has been nothing but duck and weave so far.
He has not explained how the health of the populace should not be a concern of the government BUT trees should be. Do either of you oppose tax money for the CDC?
Your repeated religious invocation suggests I am missing something SUPER obvious. So point me to the SUPER obvious answer. Should be simple.
Didn’t you know that your opinion sways the entire country?
Federal land is covered by Federal Regulations. Health insurance/Health care should be a state issue. Not really that hard to understand.
The points from him sound more asinine when one remembers that the new plan establishes high risk pools, covered by the government.
We may have some common ground if the OP also realizes that this was in reality unwise for the house, we may think that it was unwise for different reasons, but unwise anyhow.