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After two years of wrangling since the passage of “Obamacare,” the Supreme Court of the United States has spent the last three days hearing oral arguments about the “Constitutionality’ of the new law. And being an Esquire, I’ve been absorbed by the proceedings. Using my “superior legal reasoning” bestowed upon me by the faculty at Washburn Law School, here are the two simple reasons this health care law is going down in flames.
Number 1: The law mandates that everyone must buy insurance and if you don’t, you pay a penalty which is collected by the I.R.S. Insurance is contractual in nature and a citizen cannot be forced to sign a contract under duress. If threatening a person who does not buy insurance with the I.R.S. is not duress, I don’t know what is…
Number 2: The Severability Doctrine: this is a legislative concept which allows for one part of a law to be found Unconstitutional but leaves the rest of the law intact. The Democratic Leadership of the Senate- in all their “brilliance” forgot to put a severability clause into the final bill signed by Obama. And without this clause, the Supreme Court can throw out Obamacare, in toto, if just one part is found to violate the Constitution.
The scariest thing if this law is upheld is if the government can force you to buy health insurance, what can’t they force you to do or buy? Regardless of whether one thinks we need some sort of national health care law which helps to cover the uninsured, it ought to be Constitutional in nature and not destroy the best health care system in the World.
But don’t fret all you supporters of the President – If you want Obama re-elected- Obamacare being found Unconstitutional is the best thing that could happen.
Why?
After the “Affordable Care Act” was signed into law, the 2010 election were a disaster for the President and the Democrat Party, losing their supermajorities in the House and the Senate.
Take the yoke of Obamacare off of the President and what issues do the Republicans have left to beat him with?
Exercising My Constitutional Rights
EXERCISE you FAT FUCKS! Hell, if everybody just walked briskly, 20 minutes a day we could cut health care costs by 30%. Cut down on the portions we eat by 30% and whack off another 25%.
Give diabetics Pharma grade cinnamon or Gymnema and cut insulin and testing costs by 50%. BUT NOOOOOOOOO, cause big Pharma and the AMA can’t make any money. Fucking ironic that allopathic medicine was started and initially funded by JD Rockefeller cause he could only get ten cents for five cents worth of oil. By getting into the drug business he could make one dollar for five cents worth of fucking poison.
Whatever the Supreme Court does don’t think that these commie lib bastards won’t learn from their mistakes and shove some kinda new and more porent health care plan down our GI Tract.
Election is simple. You want more or less government intrusion in your life, business and wallet?
You wanna level the playing field? Give everybody a gun and 100 bullets. You’ve got two days to use them free of any prosecution. I like my chances.
No they didn’t “forget” to put in a severability clause…
..The drafters had one in and took it out in a later revision. They thought it would strengthen their argument to uphold the whole bill, in that the mandate is essential to the whole HC scheme. That decision backfired big time.
Obamacare will be constitutional, and he will win reelection
As to your first point, I think it is unlikely that it will be overturned. The federal goverment roots their justification in the commerce clause. Between 1937 and 1995 there wasn’t a single federal law invalidated under the commerce clause justification. The federal government successfully fines and or taxes individuals based on actions rooted in the commerce clause. There is no actual textual basis for denying the ability to tax and or fine inaction that is contrary to public policy.
The severability doctrine was not included in this bill because without the insurance requirement the subsidized pools are unsustainable. The feasibility of providing insurance to everyone (ie the uninsured, old) by requiring everyone low risk (the young) to buy insurance.
The young subsidize the old. That is how insurance works. That is why severability was not included in the bill.
Your article also fails to mention that regardless of the outcome, states will still be providing insurance to the old and uninsurable from 2012-2014 regardless of this decision.
I’ll bet my law degree against yours from Fred Phelps University Law School that I’m right and we are participating in national health care pools when 2014 rolls around.
as a fatman i say go smartman
My mentor and personal lord and savior Don Imus is curing HIMSELF of raging prostate cancer by diet. He went from a almost certain death threat to no real indication he has it, thanks to japalenos, raddishes and vegan diet.
And I agree with Balboa Foreskin in part. I got my law degree at DeVry which trumps you Fred Phelps paper. I think the mandate will go down and without mandate you’ve got no plan. If it doesn’t, we have an even bigger problem with our Supreme Court as mandate is totally unconstitutional. So I think I’ll win there.
Like him or not, and I don’t, get ready for Obama term 2. There is NO beating him and that frightening. How is that possible? There’s only one thing that baffled me more and its when Diana Krahl married Elvis flipping Costello. I stumbled around for a year mumbling……why didn’t I ASK HER??
Obama 2
Well, Paul, when this current crop of buffoons, led by Romney, is the best the Republicans can do, then, unfortunately, Obama 2 is going to be the man. Sad, but true. And last time, they shoot themselves in the foot with Palin – go figure!
I agree, notChuck….
The Repubics claim they want to win but spent the first 6 months tearing each other to shreds in meaningless debates. They have done such a GREAT job in those debates, convincing America they are ALL NUTS, the most red blooded couldn’t vote for their own party!! What a plan. Thanks for ushering in the worst president in history to his second term. I can’t IMAGINE what we will see when the gloves come off and he doesnt HAVE to worry about re-election.
I have the solution to the problem
Cut offense spending by half, take that money and pay for a national health system and insurance companies can still shill extra medical insurance to people concerned about “commie medicine”.
If our current mess of a medical system is so great why so we rank low on life expectancy and birth mortality rates?
Even if it’s constitutional and even if we get out of reckless overseas wars that hinder our ability to pay for it, nationalized healthcare in the US is likely to be a mess. Americans are too entitled, too litigious and there are too many conflicting federal policies. (Like subsidizing the corn industry which is basically poisoning the food supply.) The country I live in has nationalized health care and it requires a lot of compromises including an acceptance of rationed care and price controls — Americans won’t be willing to accept that sort of thing.
which
is why they should allow insurance companies to shill medical insurance after they institute national health care. People that can afford additional health insurance can still get it if they want it.
Life is full of compromises, nobody gets everything they want- everything comes at a price.
They’ll have to…
When doctors realize what rationing and price controls mean to their business you’ll see a lot of private clinics springing up that only accept cash or supplementary insurance but opt-out of the government plan. That’s exactly what happened here. What makes it problematic in the US is then you have a two-tiered system based on who can afford to pay — queue up the disparate impact lawsuits. I’m not saying eventually some equilibrium won’t be reached but I do think it will be a giant time, energy and money sink for a very long time and whether it ends up being better than the current system is anyone’s guess.