A friend (an actual friend this time) posted up in a social forum, I'm sure in response to Indiana joining 13 other states in challenging the constitutionality of the new health care law. I don't know if I'm changing any minds with this stuff, responding to these kinds of statements. But it gives me a chance to think and dig for facts, and helps me understand how to think about what I feel. If the other person gets an opportunity to hear something rational and substantial from the conservative side of the discussion, that's cool. One way or the other, it helps me.
So she starts...
... and I go....
So she starts...
Help me understand why some believe its unconstitutional to mandate that everyone have health insurance but ok to mandate car and homeowners insurance. Are they saying that material possessions are worth more than a person's health? I don't get it!
... and I go....
Can I take a whack at this, Gail? If I drive a car, I'm required to have insurance – and by the state, not the federal government. If I choose *not* to own a vehicle (say, I live in downtown Chicago and take the El, or I live in Boulder and ride a mountain bike everywhere), I’m not required to still buy the auto insurance. But no such "out" exists with this law -- I still have to buy the car insurance whether I want or need or or even have a car.
It's one thing to regulate activity, but a whole ‘nother beast to *require* a person to participate in an activity (perhaps against their will). Are you aware that Title IV of this law amends the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to allow IRS agents to find and punish those who don't sign up? They estimate they'll hire ~17,000 new agents for this new enforcement power. This is a whole new level of oversight and enforcement and control over what have heretofore been personal decisions.
Next, this law *requires states* to establish benefit exchanges… or the Secretary of HHS will step in and take over. As far as that goes, the Supreme Court has struck down two laws in recent years on grounds that the US Constitution forbids the federal government from commandeering any branch of a state government to administer a federal program -- which this law does. And which is part of the reason why Indiana is joining 13 other states to challenge the constitutionality of this law.
I could go on: AT&T and Verizon and Caterpillar and Valero Energy and 3M and Medtronic are already warning that they may have to lay off people or cancel coverage for retirees because of increased costs, and Henry Waxman is demanding analyses and company documents and emails going back to 2003 and CEOs appearing before him to explain themselves. Intimidation? “No kids with preexisting conditions denied,” but then “…ooops, not so much...
Please... don’t let people make the easy but false analogy that it’s about relative worth, about cars versus people. It's not about a lack of compassion for people and it's not about what Frank Rich says it is. There's a lot with health care that needs fixed, absolutely. People need access to care, and this system has been hobbled and failing for a long time.
State-level programs can work. The Healthy Indiana Plan (HIP) has been providing HSAs to 50,000 low-income Hoosiers and was an enormously popular and effective program. I think the words Gov. Daniels used was that this program would “be annihilated” by the new federal law. They’ve already frozen enrollment, anticipating that these Hoosiers will be pitched onto the new rolls of an expanded Medicaid program.
We’ve got to improve health care, yes. And we want to do the noble and right thing by helping do for people who have trouble doing for themselves. But if we risk throwing aside the Constitution because it feels good to feel like we’re finally doing something, we’re risking a thing that makes the US unique and special in the world.
At the core of it, it’s about the Founders' intent, enshrined in the Constitution, that the federal government have limited powers that are specifically granted to it by that Constitution, and that the states have sovereign powers reserved to them. This is not an esoteric, sophomore-level, law-school, coffee-shop debate... these are foundational principles on which this country rests.
This country’s health care issues can be fixed without throwing the US Constitution and free markets and our founding principles out the window.
I’ll just add again a quote I posted up the other day: "In questions of power, then, let no more be heard of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution." —Thomas Jefferson
What do you think? (Man, that was my whole evening on this… see how much I like you?)