Two Years On: Obamacare

I don't own a car. And I don't have to.

Under the precedent being set, maybe someday I'll be forced to, but not today.

Notice the incredibly important difference between.

"You must X if you want to operate a motor vehicle on government highways."

vs.

"You must X if you exist."

It's kind of an important distinction.

Yes. I pay a tax that goes to fund a federal program.

If Obama had passed a tax that paid for a federal health insurance program, I'd be cheering wildly too. But he didn't.

 

This is not just a home run, it's a grand slam.

 

And if you choose not to purchase health insurance, you'll pay a tax.

Riddle me the difference.

You must carry car insurance if you want to drive a car.

You must carry health insurance if you want to live in a country that guarantees emergency care to the uninsured.

People want to guarantee coverage to the uninsured.

 

So now the country you were born in was a "choice"? Absolutely ridiculous.

 

No, passing laws that mandated emergency treatment of the sick and injured without regard to their insurance status or ability to pay was a choice.

The correct choice, by the way.

 

If you think the Constitution shouldn't give Congress the power to regulate interstate commerce, then, yes, it's poorly written. Perhaps that's what you truly believe. But if you do think Congress should have that power, then you just don't like the way Congress has exercised that power in this case. Bad laws, stupid laws, ineffective laws, laws that force you do to things you might not want to do -- those are not unconstitutional. They're just bad laws. The remedy for them is not amending the Constitution; it's electing people who won't pass bad laws, and who will pass good ones.

 

Living in the country where you were born in is a choice.

 

For anyone actually interested in the individual mandate and how it works, Ezra Klein had a pretty good explainer today...

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ezra-klein/2010/03/how_does_the_individual_mandat.html

 

Well, except for the teabaggers who scream "yeahhhhh!!!" at debates when the College of Clowns starts talking about letting the uninsured die on the hospital doorsteps.

Their just-barely-less-callous colleagues, who grant that maybe corpses littering hospital doorways might be something our society might want to avoid, harrumph and harrumph about "free riders," then in the next breath go into vapors over the individual mandate (and if you want to see an object [their heads] spinning in excess of the speed of light, just breathe the words 'single payer').

So which is it? Are we gonna let people drop dead on the hospital doorsteps, or have a) individual mandate or b) single payer?

 

An incredible amount of stretching going on here.

Anyone on the left intellectually honest enough to call out this BS?

But taking your "point" further, why did any lefties stay here when this country used to run on the Constitution?

 

If we can, let's focus on the ACA.

 

Since it wasn't happening before the (u)ACA, why do you assume it would happen without the (u)ACA?