By ‘constitutionally speaking’, what I meant was, if we actually paid attention to what the constitution says.
I wonder how many people actually realize how much this will cost them?
Using the tool you just linked to, if you’re in a typical family of three with a household income of $40,000, the government will only give you a subsidy for your mandated health insurance if it exceeds $3220 per year.
A family of three earning $40,000 is going to have a hell of a time coming up with $3200. And insurance for a young family of three with a small child is probably worth about that much money. Furthermore, if you’re in a two-income family that’s only earning $40,000, you’re most likely not getting health insurance through your employer.
This is the very model of the currently uninsured - the ‘working poor’ who make below the national average family income and who can’t afford health care, but who make too much to get Medicaid. They’re being ‘covered’ now, but only by being told they have to pay. Unless they’re living in poverty, they’re not getting much help to make it affordable.
I wonder if the idea all along was to put out a plan that would hurt people so much that it would result in a clamor for a full single-payer government plan…
As well as the issuance of marriage licenses.
Try the end of the week.
I don’t know about that. $266 a month for two people and a child seems pretty reasonable to me. Especially with a child.
How do you figure? That cite is about subsidies, not about penalties.
Sounds to me that this isnt UHC, but just forcing people to buy shit they can’t afford, and its shit they WOULD have bought in the first place if they COULD afford it.
Its like one step up from just outlawing poverty to solve the poverty problem.
Here’s the Q&A about penalties, again from MSNBC
Q: I don’t have health insurance. Would I have to get it, and what happens if I don’t?
A: Under the legislation, most Americans would have to have insurance by 2014 or pay a penalty. The penalty would start at $95, or up to 1 percent of income, whichever is greater, and rise to $695, or 2.5 percent of income, by 2016. This is an individual limit; families have a limit of $2,085. Some people would be exempted from the insurance requirement, called an individual mandate, because of financial hardship or religious beliefs or if they are American Indians, for example.
The federal government is limited to the enumerated powers? ROFLMAO, riiiight, keep thinking that.
It may be reasonable, but is it affordable? Can a family of three making $40K per year come up with that kind of money? It seems to me that one of the reasons there are so many uninsured right now is because they have decided they can’t afford it.
It seems to me that there’s another perverse incentive here. Liberals complained about the current system in that it locked a person into a single employer for fear of losing their health coverage. This plan seems to make that worse, because if you lose your job you not only lose your health insurance, but you’re forced to either pay for it on your own or start paying penalties. You no longer have the option of going uninsured until you can find a new job with coverage.
Huh?!? I think you are interpreting constitutional law differently than every court since Marbury v. Madison.
It takes steps to make sure that it is affordable. Also, someone who doesn’t have insurance is a burden on society, because if and when they fall sick they have to be treated at great additional cost to the taxpayer.
Remember that for millions of Americans health insurance isn’t available at any cost, or the cost is literally beyond their capacity to pay. I knew a guy who had to quit his job because the cost to cover his daughter on his insurance was more than his paycheck.
It’s very reasonable. It’s a hell of a lot less than what I pay now. Sam is also being deceptive in that he’s ignoring the employers’ share of the bills and pretending that these families would be paying the whole freight by themselves
Yes, single payer would be better. OBVIOUSLY, it would be better. Everybody knows that, but this current plan is going to make paying for health care easier, not harder (especially small business, who will be eligible for generous subsidies) and removes the drain of the financially able, but free-loading uninsured from the backs of those who pay their bills.
Easily.
I hear you but the answer is still “probably” The federal government taxes all sorts of things that impose social costs, everything from sin taxes to gas guzzler taxes. Like i said, the power to tax is pretty broad, in fact the power to do just about anything is pretty broad.
Yes, but those people would also be able to buy subsidized insurance, so they won’t be affected.
You mean if we all interpreted the Constitution the way YOU interpret it. Unfortunately, the Supreme Court hasn’t agreed with you more than a handful of time in very extreme cases in almost a hundred years.
It sounds like many other gubment programs. The people that cant afford anything are GIVEN yet another freebee. The rich people are given the shaft but they can afford it, so who cares. And then there is the big group in the middle getting the shaft yet again, the working middle/lower middle class that works hard for everything they have.
They already get health care as a freebee today.
They just get it in a very inefficient and expensive way.
Point being you are paying for them anyway, might as well make it cost as little as possible.
To be nitpicky again in the same thread (and only in reference to Constitutional law would I feel it appropriate to do so twice or more), your statement would need to add "or in the various other power grants scattered through the original text and amendments. For example, Article IV Section 1 gives Congress the power to establish a uniform rule by which the acts and judicial decisions of each state may be proven to the others. Amendments 13, 14, 15, 19, 23, 24, and 26 each contain a grant of “power to enforce this article* by appropriate legislation.”
- FWIW, the technical term for a U.S. Constitutional amendment is the “Nth Article of Amendment”.