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SCOTUS Upholds Obamacare

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Wotan

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I think it is utterly ridiculous and without any facts or reason whatsoever to think that Roberts did what he did out of any motivation related to the Strike in Atlas Shrugged.Both he and Greenspan before him are just utter betrayers of individual rights and the proper role of government. Supposedly, Roberts did it out of a threat from the Left that they would hound him until the day he died by not letting the USA "catch up" with the rest of the industrialized world as the only such country that did not have socialized medicine. In a face-off between the selfishness of individual rights and the altruism of maintaining the socialist dream, he caved -- and we will be paying the price for it for the rest of our lives. To hell with him and Greenspan, people who ought to have known better, given their background, but who gave in anyhow in the face of Leftist smear campaigns.

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If I can be the one to ask simple practical questions, can somebody answer this one (which I asked above but I didn't get the complete answer I was looking for so I'll rephrase).

The question is, as one who already pays taxes in some abundance, will the Mandate make my taxes go up or down?

My assumptions are:

1) I'm already paying for every deadbeat's health care already and we all have been since the 60s, and no politician in DC is even remotely questioning that premise.

2) The Mandate and the rest of OC is meant to drive down aggregate costs and may well achieve that with prodigious use of Death Panels and other cost-saving measures.

3) The Mandate itself may be applied to some whom are not paying anything now, thus reducing what I need to pay.

If the above assumptions are true (and I honestly haven't researched these in depth), then could conclude that OC will reduce my taxes or least prevent them from going up more.

The next question I'd have is this: does OC in its current form restrict the rights of folks that already have insurance through private companies? I

Obviously nobody is questioning the wrongness of the Mandate (in every form), but I'm just wondering how this will affect me in the here/now...

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The question is, as one who already pays taxes in some abundance, will the Mandate make my taxes go up or down?
It will probably have zero impact on your taxes. Today, people without insurance are treated anyway, and the bill is picked up partially by the government and partially by everyone who is insured -- because hospitals factor in non-payments etc. when calculating their costs and their rates. Using a static analysis, and looking at the mandate along, the impact would be to lower your health-care premium ever so slightly. One could argue that medicaid will also have to pay less... lowering the pressure to raise taxes. However, what if the usage by such people goes up significantly, now that they think they're entitled to care?

It is an academic question though. The mandate never was the key evil in Obamacare. The hope was that the SCOTUS, leaning GOP, would want to overturn Obamacare, and would use the mandate as their rationalization. Given that the SCOTUS is like a super-senate, I think this was a reasonable hope. I know I would have said the odds favored the mandate being shut-down. Obviously, there is disappointment that Obamacare has been allowed to go through. Since the mandate was the crutch, a lot of the argument and focus still revolves around that.

In the bargain, not many people know that the SCOTUS shot down a costly provision of Obamacare: which mandated that States should cover all sorts of new people under Medicaid. The SCOTUS shot that down. States may still end up doing so, but the Feds cannot force them today...they will have to do so incrementally.

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My understanding was that hospitals and insurance companies supported OC because it would mean less deadbeats for them to deal with, hence lowering their costs and (hopefully) lowering our premiums. Clearly its a big question as to how much.

You raise the key question, of course: will the free health care increase costs due to people increasing usage? My counter-argument to that would be that everybody already has free health care if they want it so that has already been priced into the system (in it's scarily growing non-linear way).

The one detail I personally do not know is how much they figure the mandate penalty (come tax) will raise. Presumably all of those dollars will be money in the pockets of current taxpayers.

Pushing problems down to the State level is an interesting maneuver. The overall effect is only to raise to overall cost of capital (as the Fed can borrow money more cheaply any State). That said, as a stop-gap, pushing all taxes to the States would allow them to compete on tax structure which would be useful I think. Obviously this is revenue-neutral as it were.

SN you mentioned the mandate wasn't the key evil of OC. What are they then?

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I think it is utterly ridiculous and without any facts or reason whatsoever...

And you're justified in thinking so. But if someone were to perform the acts of a Galt or a D'Anconia, he would be viewed exactly as Greenspan and Roberts are, the only clue being the contradiction between their espoused beliefs and their actions. You can't deny that there is a profound contradiction between their ostensibly deeply held beliefs and their actions. Since there are no contradictions, they either do not hold those beliefs, or they are taking actions congruent with their enemies precepts in order to hasten the inevitable failure of those precepts.

I don't think it's possible to crawl into their heads and know whether they are traitors to their cause or principled saboteurs. I suppose in either case the rational attitude is to take them at their actions, either to guard against their treachery or to protect from exposure their true motives.

But this is all in fun - you have to have some escape from news of the continuing death spiral...

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I think the idea that we have some sort of savior in the likes of Greenspan and Roberts and that they are acting secretly to safe us is to place fantasy above reality. For one thing, while it is true that top judges went on strike in AS, they did not promote irrational laws before going on strike, as this would be immoral. In other words, Judge Narraganset did not promote laws against individual freedom in order to hasten the collapse brought about by the strike.

But regarding Roberts, the Chief Injustice, there is a new theory floating around out there that he was following a philosophical Justice and dealing in Judicial non-activism -- not overturning laws based upon a principle, but rather giving the American people what they want via the Legislative process (a form of Pragmatism). In this respect, his decision to pass ObamaCare was more philosophical and not the immediate range of the moment in what others would think of the Supreme Court not to pass a voted for Law.

There's a new theory floating about that the Chief Injustice was following Oliver Wendell Holmes' theories about judicial restraint regarding the not passing of laws made by the House and Senate.

http://en.wikipedia....dell_Holmes,_Jr

Edited by Thomas M. Miovas Jr.
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Here is a "practical" application of the idea endorsed by the SCOTUS regarding the government supposed ability to tax you into doing whatever the hell it commands you to do through the tax code. A leading Christian advocate is saying that there ought to be a tax onto people who do NOT go to church. This is entirely different from the idea that taxes ought to be high so that specific deductions can be made for doing certain things. In other words, currently, you might be able to deduct church going or belonging to charitable organizations, but they could not target specific individual for a special added on tax. Now they can do this, according to legal experts on taxation I have read on the internet. There could be a little box you would have to check-mark, and if you do not check-mark it, you will be taxed in addition to your general tax level. That is, do you own a Chevy Volt? NO, pay additional $500 in taxes. Go to church? NO, pay an additional $300. Have solar panels on your roof? NO, pay an additional $1,000. etc.

Also, I have seen a picture meme that claims the whole idea of a mandate to impose additional fees for not having health insurance came from the Heritage Foundation, a Conservative think tank, and then was endorsed by a conservative congressman, and then endorsed by a conservative House of Reps. So, it was not brought about via the Leftists only -- the Conservatives had a hand in it from the get-go.

394666_10150940689487568_241435022_n.jpg

Edited by Thomas M. Miovas Jr.
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I'm not sure, but I might owe Software Nerd an apology for not making the above more clear when I was arguing with him over the impact of the SCOTUS decision. As I understand his position, the mere fact that some can get deductions while others cannot means that those not getting the deductions are paying a higher rate of taxation. But while this is true, in a sense, it's still not the same thing as having targeted tax / penalties for not doing what the government orders you to do. Of course, it would have been better if the Founders had discovered some mean of financing the government that wasn't taxation, such as a national lottery; but even from the very beginning we have had special taxes on specific items not paid by those not engaged in buying or selling of those items -- i.e. the whiskey tax. Too bad this wasn't seen as a violation of the rights of the whiskey producers and sellers, as we would have won that battle long ago.

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... ..., it's still not the same thing as having targeted tax / penalties for not doing what the government orders you to do.
One GOP congressman wants to design this as a tax-credit. Under this scheme, everyone who buys health-insurance will get a tax-credit. Of course, the total tax-collections will go down under such a scheme, so tax rates would need to go up by a few percent across the board, as part of such a scheme. Do you think that is different or better even though everyone pays exactly the same under the penalty structure and the tax-credit structure?
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I'm against it either way, of course, but there would be no need to raise taxes to do the tax-credit if the government would learn to live within their means and cut spending. And given the "progressive" tax structure,the raising of taxes and giving tax credits may not have such a burden on me, as I am at the lower end (so I don't think my overall taxes would go up by $700 per year). It all depends on how they would work it all out. Of course, the GOP are turn-coats for trying to make it all work out to begin with. If they are trying to "ease the pain" then they share in the evil of the individual mandate.

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... the GOP are turn-coats...
I get your drift, except -- to be really precise -- the GOP never ever wore their coat right side out. Even the people they would point to as being ultra-free-market (like Milton Friedman) would have accepted things like the individual mandate and tax-credits.
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The problem with the Conservatives is that they will accept a government law -- maybe questioning it somewhat -- but will never let the Leftists pay for it fully by letting the whole issue become a big mess that cannot be worked out. They feel they have a duty to make it work out, no matter how insane. For once, I would like to see Conservative leaders tell the Marxists / Leftists that we are not going to get you out of this pickle this time. The full burden will fall onto the America people, and you will pay the price for it. Trouble is, if the meme posted earlier is true that it all came from the Conservatives in the first place, then they are covering their own butts by trying to make it work out. But of course, the Conservatives have not rejected altruism and feel the need to provide something for the wretched and the downtrodden, like find some way to get them health care.

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I've said this before and I'll say it again: today we have dishonest Statists (Rs) and more honest Statists (Ds).

OC is basically a way to make socialized medicine more practical and streamlined and the socialized medicine we already have. Nobody left right or center is question the existence of socialized medicine, which is why the above cartoon makes so much sense. Within the premise that every citizen must be afforded free health care, then the mandate that they pay if they can makes more sense than them not paying if they can. The Mandate is a relatively regressive tax, which is probably why it spawned from the HF.

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  • 1 year later...

The court actually ruled that this is a tax, and it is constitutional... So, if the ACA did originate in the Senate, then it seems the SCOTUS doesn't care where taxation originates, constitution be damned.

The case Sissel v. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services addressed the origination of the law. The U.S. District Court (DC) dismissed the suit on the following grounds (from Wikipedia):

 

... ... that the Origination Clause challenge failed, as the bill enacting the individual mandate was not a bill for raising revenue, and...

... ... that even if the bill enacting the individual mandate were a bill for raising revenue, the Origination Clause challenge failed because the bill was an amendment to a bill that had originated in the House of Representatives

The second point was a farce, according to the Pacific Legal Foundation which is still appealing it. They say that the Senate took a 6-page bill about veterans Housing subsidy and replaced it with their 2000-page health-care bill. By common-sense this was no "amendment"; but, courts can sometimes be purposely blind.

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