Broccoli and Bad Faith...Krugman style

[MindMover]

Nobody knows what the Supreme Court will decide with regard to the Affordable Care Act. But, after this week’s hearings, it seems quite possible that the court will strike down the “mandate” — the requirement that individuals purchase health insurance — and maybe the whole law. Removing the mandate would make the law much less workable, while striking down the whole thing would mean denying health coverage to 30 million or more Americans.

Given the stakes, one might have expected all the court’s members to be very careful in speaking about both health care realities and legal precedents. In reality, however, the second day of hearings suggested that the justices most hostile to the law don’t understand, or choose not to understand, how insurance works. And the third day was, in a way, even worse, as antireform justices appeared to embrace any argument, no matter how flimsy, that they could use to kill reform.

Let’s start with the already famous exchange in which Justice Antonin Scalia compared the purchase of health insurance to the purchase of broccoli, with the implication that if the government can compel you to do the former, it can also compel you to do the latter. That comparison horrified health care experts all across America because health insurance is nothing like broccoli.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/30/opinion/krugman-broccoli-and-bad-faith.html?_r=2

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[xtraxritical]

1. Reagan and the Bushes packed this Supreme Court with supreme dorks.

That is why it is imperative to vote a straight Democratic ballot in November.

[MindMover]

2. AMEN......to that one...

[WillyT]

3. K & R !!!

:kick:

[Uncle Joe]

4. They are fundamentally different, I like Krugman but he should know this.

"There are at least two ways to address this reality — which is, by the way, very much an issue involving interstate commerce, and hence a valid federal concern. One is to tax everyone — healthy and sick alike — and use the money raised to provide health coverage. That’s what Medicare and Medicaid do. The other is to require that everyone buy insurance, while aiding those for whom this is a financial hardship. "

"Are these fundamentally different approaches? Is requiring that people pay a tax that finances health coverage O.K., while requiring that they purchase insurance is unconstitutional? It’s hard to see why — and it’s not just those of us without legal training who find the distinction strange. Here’s what Charles Fried — who was Ronald Reagan’s solicitor general — said in a recent interview with The Washington Post: “I’ve never understood why regulating by making people go buy something is somehow more intrusive than regulating by making them pay taxes and then giving it to them.”

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In the case of the former non-profit Medicare and Medicaid or Universal Single Payer coverage, profit would be non-existent and the primary directive would be actually covering health care. It would also be run by the government and the people's taxes would not be used against their best interests, without immediate oversight the same can't be said for the latter.

An enriched, federally institutionalized for profit "health" insurance industry benefiting from the mandate would use the profits from their captured customers' premium money to lobby or bribe future Congresses to erode the good parts of the law, that may be beneficial to the people but costly to the company in an effort to obtain more profit, the natural instinct of any for profit institution.

"Health insurance corporations; might also use that premium money to lobby or bribe future Congresses to allow them to merge into even greater monopolies which in turn would damage the peoples' ability to buy insurance at competitive prices and thus continue to drive up the cost of health care.

It's a Constitutional question of whether the peoples' tax money should be used to "promote the general welfare" or should the people be mandated in to a partial form of servitude to a profit driven industry diametrically opposed to the stated ideals listed in the Preamble of the Constitution.

Thanks for the thread, MindMover.

[MindMover]

5. Well said....and if this is really the question, then there should be an easy answer...

"It's a Constitutional question of whether the peoples' tax money should be used to "promote the general welfare" or should the people be mandated in to a partial form of servitude to a profit driven industry diametrically opposed to the stated ideals listed in the Preamble of the Constitution."