So if the free loader problem is the justification for a mandate then why shouldn’t Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, or someone financially capable be able to post a financial responsibility bond or otherwise demonstrate he has the assets to pay his own health care and opt out of the insurance mandate without penalty?
States (example from Ohio) often allow just such a bond in lieu of auto insurance.
Under any reasonable or unreasonable hypothetical people with such assets have the money to pay for their own health care needs and those of their family. There is no reasonable argument that they are/would be a free loader.
Or is the issue not really the free loader problem and instead a desire to forcibly redistribute payment for health care?
The reality is the Congress did not even vote on what services would be covered under PPACA. They voted to authorize the Secretary of Health and Human Services to make that determination and decide a whole bunch of other details that ultimately affect what PPACA really is.
In a sense, yes, they would have to pass it and wait for the Secretary of HHS to make decisions to know what is in it. She has already put forth certain proposed regulations which have raised opposition. (e.g. Birth Control)
Of course this offers a back door by which a Republican president could appoint a new Secretary of HHS who could then, by regulation, gut the law.
This is not entirely unique to the PPACA. Congress authorizes various agencies to make decisions all the time without going into detail.
Presumably anyone, even Gates or Buffet, can chose not to get insurance and pay the penalty instead, thus no special provision is necessary. As far as redistribution is concerned, I don’t know, is that the goal? Do you have a good reason for thinking this is the case?
I’m absolutely serious. The idea was to create a system that extended coverage to those who didn’t have it, make it more affordable and to fix a bunch of shitty things insurance companies were doing. There was more than one way to do that. They chose a solution that included a mandate. So, as far as the mandate being necessary to the solution that included a mandate, yeah, it was necessary. The same way that me finding the best way to climb to the top of Mount Everest necessitates that I have a parrot on my head.
Of course Gates and Buffet can afford the penalty. That is not the issue I raised.
The “free loader” (or “free rider” depending on preferred terminology) problem is oft cited as the reason we need a mandate. The mandate is a [del]tax[/del] [del]penalty[/del] shared responsibility payment that requires a person to pay some money if they do not have health insurance.
The rationale is that government has an interest in protecting the masses from having to pay medical bills as the insurer of last resort for someone who could have purchased health insurance.
But if someone is clearly in financial condition to demonstrate financial responsibility for a worst case scenario absent purchasing health insurance then by what rationale should government be able to force them to buy insurance? Why does it make sense to require Bill Gates or Warren Buffet to pay a [del]tax[/del] [del]penalty[/del] shared responsibility payment if there is no way they could conceivably end up a free loader on the public purse?
I would argue that the underlying goal is not necessarily to avoid the free rider problem, even though that is what was argued at the Supreme Court. I would argue that the underlying motivation is to force redistribution of medical costs. I just don’t think it would have played as well in the public eye if they stated that from the beginning.
It has very little to do with ACA detractors. The states did not independently have standing to challenge the mandate; that’s why they had to find a patsy to serve as a co-plaintiff. That said, I don’t think breadth is a particularly good argument (for all that I am in favor of the mandate and its constitutionality); 4 million people is quite a lot.
Easy: It should be struck down because the votes that were cast were not cast for a new tax. That’s not what each vote was assessing.
I think you’re engaging in some very wishful thinking, Here is a fuller version of her quote:
[QUOTE=One Dumb, Arrogant Bitch]
You’ve heard about the controversies within the bill, the process about the bill, one or the other. But I don’t know if you have heard that it is legislation for the future, not just about health care for America, but about a healthier America, where preventive care is not something that you have to pay a deductible for or out of pocket. Prevention, prevention, prevention—it’s about diet, not diabetes. It’s going to be very, very exciting.
But we have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it, away from the fog of the controversy.
[/QUOTE]
If I’m missing something, you’ll have to point it out to me. The fact is that her comment is not only stupid, it may be THE most stupid, most arrogant thing ever uttered by a congresscritter. And that’s saying’ sumthin! And how is pointing that out misleading?
The final bill was I think, in excess of 2,700 pages. How much time do you think is reasonable for congress people to be able to read the bill? How about the American people. How mush time should they have to read the bill? I’m assuming here that Obama’s campaign promise to post bills for 3 days had at its intent that the American people could read that bill. Do you think that is a fair assumption? If not, what do you think his intent was? If so, do you think that an extraordinarily long bill should be posted for longer than the 3 days? The fact is that Obama is simply full of shit, as he broke that particular campaign promise the first week in office. And for no reason.
So what? SO WHAT?!! Don’t you think it matters not how we wind up with new taxes? I think you’re skipping over the part where a bill is put forth and then the people we elected to speak on out behalf VOTE FOT IT. But you seem to want to allow for taxes being instituted that would not or do not get enough votes to past. You’ll have to explain that one to me.
It is not. Because with out the semantic sleight of hand it would have been deemed null and void. So it matters greatly. And the differences is not the name of the bill. It’s how it functions. But nice try with your own semantic sleight of hand.
The only way SCOTUS found this to be Constitutional is under the government’s power to tax. Therefore it is a tax. Therefore, SCOTUS should not have entertained that particular argument until the the tax was actually levied in 2014. Therefore, no mandate. At least for now.
A) It looks like a tax.
B) It smells like a tax.
C) Because of A and B, SCOTUS finds it Constitutional
D) Because of C, Scotus can’t rule until 2014 — Oh wait, it’s not a duck (tax) it’s a rocking chair!
Because it’s a misrepresentation of what she was saying. Other than that, though, spot on. You make an astute point about Rep. Pelosi’s dumbness and bitch-being.
Well, seat belt laws, for one. A small, small minority of people in accidents would actually be better off if they hadn’t been wearing seat belts. That doesn’t trump the overwhelming majority that would be better off having worn them or the overwhelming advantage to society, in general. Some people (among them little-l libertarians) definitely consider seat belt laws an overstepping of government power over individuals.
It’s not been absolutely proven one way or the other whether or not the individual mandate will have the same impact, but the argument that a similar justification applies is certainly there.
For the same reason people are mandated to insure their cars.
If not mandated, some people will drive uninsured, and we will all have to pay those costs.
Those costs, health insurance, are keeping us in the poor house. Mandate them.
Mandating car insurance did not lead to socialism and standing in line for bread. Neither will mandating health insurance. And it will save the country gzillions of dollars.
Uh, no. That’s not a good analogy at all. Wow. Not even close. The small minority in your example are the ones that would benefit. The small minority I was discussing are those who get penalized. and the question is, if you’d look back at the exchange I was having, what thinning supports the principle that the government can do something extra-Constitutional as long as it affects only X number of Americans?
I am sure this is not the first time you’ve had an argument about this two-year-old quote. Are you saying nobody has ever explained why your interpretation is wrong, or are you saying you don’t accept any other interpretation and intend to keep banging the drum no matter what? Not to say you might not be fair to someone you keep calling a dumb bitch, but, you know.
A reading is that you claimed it was extra-Constitutional. My take is that there are certainly libertarians who likewise claim the same for a lot of things, whether or not they affect (positively or negatively) 1%, 10%, or 100% of the people.
But fine. There are always state-level insurance mandates.
Maybe the people who wrote the Constitution did not fully understand the Constitution themselves, but that’s a bit of a reach. At the very least, they certainly did not see a problem with mandating a behavior that ‘penalized’ a small, though vital, portion of the population.
Nope. If you don’t want to pay car insurance, don’t buy a car. Millions of people take this route. Plus, as another poster pointed out, in some states you can provide a financial responsibility bond.
Not really. The mandated insurance (which is just minimal personal liability insurance) does not protect the driver, but people he may hit. And only to a very limit extent, usually $10,000.
Confusing. Please restate.
The last part is highly questionable and open to debate—to say the least. And since I just explained how car insurance (mandated by the state, by the way) is unlike health insurance, this has no bearing on the discussion.
How is what self-evident? And whatever it is, I’m pretty sure it’s not. But let’s hear it.
And if you think that at this point in the discussion your superficial treatment of the issues—“It’s self-evident!”—is moving the debate forward, you are mistaken.