I keep coming up with this analogy regarding the Obamacare decision...

[radcen]

I keep coming up with this analogy regarding the Obamacare decision... highways and people.

The federal government wants to bend states to its will on many issues. The federal government cannot always do this, Constitutionally. Hence, the federal government makes not doing so a worse alternative, usually by taking funding away from somewhere else... highway funding being an ever-popular choice. States, being just as addicted to money as the feds are, hate it, but cave in and do it.

Kind of the same concept here. The more I think about it, the more I come to the conclusion that the Individual Mandate is still NOT Constitutional, and even the administration knows this, hence this is why their strategy was to argue the Constitutional end-run of a taxing authority instead in the form of a "penalty". The government still cannot force an individual to purchase health insurance, but they have been given the go-ahead to make not buying health insurance so unpleasant that the vast majority of people will give in and purchase it anyway.

 

[ttwtt78640]

I keep coming up with this analogy regarding the Obamacare decision... highways and people.

The federal government wants to bend states to its will on many issues. The federal government cannot always do this, Constitutionally. Hence, the federal government makes not doing so a worse alternative, usually by taking funding away from somewhere else... highway funding being an ever-popular choice. States, being just as addicted to money as the feds are, hate it, but cave in and do it.

Kind of the same concept here. The more I think about it, the more I come to the conclusion that the Individual Mandate is still NOT Constitutional, and even the administration knows this, hence this is why their strategy was to argue the Constitutional end-run of a taxing authority instead in the form of a "penalty". The government still cannot force an individual to purchase health insurance, but they have been given the go-ahead to make not buying health insurance so unpleasant that the vast majority of people will give in and purchase it anyway.

I look at it this way. If you can make a tax break for buying a "hybrid" car, then you can also make a tax penalty fo not buying/owning a "hybrid" car. It would raise far more money to add a $100 "do not own hybrid" tax penalty along with a $1000 "bought new hybrid" tax credit, making it real fun to increase taxes on any "bad" folks, while rewarding the "good" folks. Yes they can!

 

[Matt Foley]

A Constitutional Amendment to prevent Congress from sending money to the States would fix all of this.

 

[jet57]

I keep coming up with this analogy regarding the Obamacare decision... highways and people.

The federal government wants to bend states to its will on many issues. The federal government cannot always do this, Constitutionally. Hence, the federal government makes not doing so a worse alternative, usually by taking funding away from somewhere else... highway funding being an ever-popular choice. States, being just as addicted to money as the feds are, hate it, but cave in and do it.

Kind of the same concept here. The more I think about it, the more I come to the conclusion that the Individual Mandate is still NOT Constitutional, and even the administration knows this, hence this is why their strategy was to argue the Constitutional end-run of a taxing authority instead in the form of a "penalty". The government still cannot force an individual to purchase health insurance, but they have been given the go-ahead to make not buying health insurance so unpleasant that the vast majority of people will give in and purchase it anyway.

The problem is verey much like when FDR said to a constituant "make me". The free market has had generations of hints and outright warnings, and they have failed miserably in their obligations to people, so the pres 'made them" do it.

Before you complain about corporate obligations; American corps are obligated to serve the best interests of the community around them; as do banks . . . Yet the insurance corps have occupied themselves with profits and takeovers, so he federal government; which is obligated to protect US and to our general welfare has interceded in our behalf to level the playing field. I predict that by 2016 we're going to see a marked decline in the cost of health care to the government: state and federal and that we will have a muuuch lower percentage of insecure people.