Sunday, April 03, 2011

Individual mandate debate - The Boston Globe has the opposing viewpoints on the Constitutionality of Obamacare's insurance mandate with Harvard's Laurence Tribe defending the law while Georgetown's Randy Barnett taking the opposing viewpoint.

18 comments:

Anonymous said...

Barnett's argument is really thin, and boils down to "the bill can't be right because it can't, because it simply CAN'T be!" And again with the broccoli.

Bram said...

Tribe's arguement is a joke. As long as anyone can argue that something is a "necessity" - viola, it's Constitutional!

According to Tribe. from now on the Supreme Court should just hear arguments to determine necessity. No need for anything else in the Constitution.

Yam said...

Bram: "As long as anyone can argue that something is a "necessity" - viola, it's Constitutional!"

Yeah, how could we ever assume Constitutionality for future "necessities"? I mean, other than the Necessary and Proper Clause in the Constitution.

Eric said...

I agree with Bram on this: Tribe's argument is that health care is necessary, therefore it's Constitutional. As Barrett points out, once you've made that decision, is there anything the Commerce Clause can't do?

The duplicitous part of Tribe's argument is "Hey, those freeloaders will be forced to buy insurance!" Except they won't: the new rules mean they can pay a fine much cheaper than insurance but get it whenever they want because there's now no rule against preconditions.

And this was NEVER about getting the freeloaders to get Blue Cross. The individual mandate is about forcing healthy younger workers to put their cash into the big insurance pool that will be sucked dry by older Baby Boomers.

Anonymous said...

Tribe may have cited a little court precedent and a few specks of constitutional law in there somewhere, too.

is there anything the Commerce Clause can't do?

Apparently the Commerce Clause can't convince some people that it exists, nor that it has a specific and unambiguous legal history.

Eric said...

Yeah I like the precedent of: making companies buy fire extinguishers = making people buy health insurance.

The Commerce Clause is unambiguous. Every year Congress asks to chip away at our freedom and every year the CC says "Sure!" Couldn't be clearer.

Bram said...

Yam - So why did they bother with the rest of the Constitution? Why the enumerated powers? Why the Ninth and Tenth Amendments if everything necessary is permissible to the Federal Government?

Why have a revolution to replace a Constitutional Monarchy limited by the Magna Carta and the English Bill of 1689 with an unlimited mob-run dictatorship?

Anonymous said...

Er... you realize that the Commerce Clause is an enumerated power, don't you?

Bram said...

I was responding to Yam's comment.

Yes - they named it and they limited it to trade across state lines, not everything under the sun.

Anonymous said...

And we're back to the "it can't be so because it can't be so" wish.

I know some wrinkly old dudes in black sheets who have spent over a century disagreeing with you.

Anonymous said...

I know some old guys who wore white sheets and were wrong too.

Eric said...

Was one of them Robert Byrd?

Gonzales v. 3rd Raich said...

When Robert Byrd was just a cute little racist baby, the Supreme Court's verdict on the Commerce Clause was already decades old.

Anybody who thinks otherwise may be three sheets to the wind... or up Sheet Crick without a gavel.

Eric said...

In the end, it won't matter what the Supreme Court thinks. Americans hate Obamacare so much, it will be defunded or de facto repealed through state-level resistance.

Anonymous said...

Single payer: bring it on!

Even granting your bogus claim, Americans hate (or strongly oppose) many things a lot more than the new health care law. These include expanded criminal rights, the prevalence of abortion, blocking student prayer, corporate influence in political campaigns, affirmative action, federal dominance over the states, flag burning, rules barring evidence, the inability to impose Congressional term limits, removing religious displays, and Fred Phelps' cheerful God Hates Fags crew.

Keep clapping for Tinkerbell to wither away and die, but in the end, it matters almost entirely what the Supreme Court thinks.

Eric said...

The dismantlement begins:

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011/04/10/budget-deal-targets-pieces-health-care-law/

Anonymous said...

Begins, and ends. The Free Choice Voucher had become unpopular among both parties. Without Congressional support from either side, its removal had been long expected.

The only other change to the health care law applies to 2011 only: Senator Kent Conrad's health care co-ops will have their funding halved for this year, then restored in full for 2012.

1 change, 1 tweak. That's it. On a law we've already been told from the President on down would not be the finished product.

John Boehner would LOVE for Tea Partiers to think this represents the first stage of "dismantlement" of the Obamacare menace... but even those most rabid consumers of fiction may not buy that one.

Ross Kubler said...

"This was NEVER about getting the freeloaders to get Blue Cross. The individual mandate is about forcing healthy younger workers to put their cash into the big insurance pool that will be sucked dry by older Baby Boomers."

"In the end, it won't matter what the Supreme Court thinks."

"The dismantlement begins."


No, no, no, you've got it as anger, denial, bargaining. That's out of order. The denial comes BEFORE the anger.