Yesterday evening I had an amazing conversation and I report on it now. The person is a liberal although that person pretends I’ve got that all wrong.
Anyway the thrust of the concern was the cost of the upcoming changes to the healthcare system in this country, more commonly known as Obamacare.
Well I couldn’t wait to thrust my boot into that soon-to-be corpse and so I related a conversation with an insurance broker. That person affirms that insurance companies cannot, in future, refuse coverage because of pre-existing conditions.
Whoopee! Fireworks! Champagne and Cake! Liberal victory!
Not so fast. The cost will be between $400 and $900 per month and I’ll leave it to you to do the math.
If you are surprised you should not be.
When Congress required most Americans to obtain health insurance or pay a penalty, Democrats denied that they were creating a new tax. But in court, the Obama administration and its allies now defend the requirement as an exercise of the government’s “power to lay and collect taxes.”
Administration officials say the tax argument is a linchpin of their legal case in defense of the health care overhaul and its individual mandate, now being challenged in court by more than 20 states and several private organizations.
The individual mandate is a tax, denials of the administration to the contrary. And, as it now seems clear, the administration is now going to enthusiastically call it a tax in order to keep it from being thrown out as blatantly unconstitutional. You see, the Commerce Clause argument falls down when you put too much pressure on it.
It was at this point that I had the uneasy feeling that I was approaching waters, the depth of which, I was ill-equipped to handle. So I asked the granddaughter of a friend. The granddaughter has just finished 1st year law school and this is what I got.
"To assess the constitutionality of a claim of power under the Commerce Clause, the primary question becomes, 'what class of activity is Congress seeking to regulate?' Only when this question is answered can the Court assess whether that class of activity substantially affects interstate commerce. Significantly, the mandate imposed by the pending bills does not regulate or prohibit the economic activity of providing or administering health insurance. Nor does it regulate or prohibit the economic activity of providing health care, whether by doctors, hospitals, pharmaceutical companies, or other entities engaged in the business of providing a medical good or service. Indeed, the health care mandate does not purport to regulate or prohibit activity of any kind, whether economic or non-economic. To the contrary, it purports to 'regulate' inactivity."
Now this kid will go far but it really didn't help me too much and so I asked for more. And I got this.
"Proponents of the individual mandate are contending that, under its power to 'regulate commerce…among the several states,' Congress may regulate the doing of nothing at all! In other words, the statute purports to convert inactivity into a class of activity. By its own plain terms, the individual mandate provision regulates the absence of action. To uphold this power under its existing doctrine, the Court must conclude that an individual’s failure to enter into a contract for health insurance is an activity that is 'economic' in nature– that is, it is part of a 'class of activity' that 'substantially affects interstate commerce'"'
But I did understand this bit. Never in this nation’s history has the commerce power been used to require a person who does nothing to engage in economic activity.
Now it's all crystal clear. If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it's almost certainly not a gekko with a cute Cockey accent. It's a tax which means, by the way, that when Obama promised not to raise taxes: …. he lied.
And he thinks that the American people will swallow that lie, because he and his party’s leadership cadre all think that the American people are stupid.
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