No, I'm not pinching myself over this great victory for the average American, much as Michael Moore and other proponents of the bill would like to believe (in fact, about 3/4 of Americans believed that at least the individual mandate was unconstitutional, according to a Gallup Poll conducted in February). Several parts of the bill are dubious and will only serve to drive up health care costs, such as the provision that allows children to remain on their parents' health insurance plans until the age of 26, but I can live with that. It's not the worst thing in the world, and it's not even the worst part of the bill. That honor goes to the individual mandate.
Yes, I know that the individual mandate was originally a Republican idea created as a compromise to not enact a single-payer system, and that doesn't make me more likely to sympathize with it. I may hate the Democrats with a burning passion, but I also hate the Republicans almost equally so. It's a ridiculously stupid and overreaching idea. What's even worse was that the constitutional argument for the mandate was the Commerce Clause, which gives Congress the power to regulate interstate trade, which health insurance supposedly falls under. If the mandate had been upheld under this clause, what's to stop the government from forcing people to buy something like dildos under the guise of keeping the costs of sex toys down?
Luckily, the decision had one silver lining. The mandate was upheld, but not under the Commerce Clause. It was upheld as a tax, which is a small slap in the face to President Obama and everybody else who argued that the non-compliance fee was a penalty and not a tax. Congress does have the power to levy taxes, much to my chagrin, but even a hardcore libertarian like myself will admit that some taxes are needed to a certain extent (not this one, however). In the majority opinion Justice Roberts wrote the following as reasoning for not using the Commerce Clause in this case:
The Framers gave Congress the power to regulate commerce, not to compel it, and for over 200 years both our decisions and Congress’s actions have reflected this understanding. There is no reason to depart from that understanding now. (p. 24)
Don't worry; the companies had plenty of help from the government when they corrupted the system. Huge tax incentives for employer-provided health insurance have driven up the cost for individually purchased health insurance. Now that everybody is dependent on this new system where health care is dependent on an employer or the government (medicare, medicaid) prices for health services have skyrocketed. Those caught in the middle, too well-off for welfare and without a good enough job for insurance are left with sub-par and expensive care. The government really needs to stop offering employer’s those incentives. Employers would cut health benefits for employees which would boost profits. A boost in profits would likely bring a pay raise (to make up for lost benefits) or the hiring of new employees, helping ease unemployment. Our current system for delivering healthcare is broken; the government was the accomplice of huge corporations as they drove up the price of healthcare.
ReplyDeleteVery true. It seems that our polarized political environment has created a situation where you either believe completely in Obama's health care vision, or you want health care to revert back to how it always was. I rarely hear anybody outside of libertarian circles coming out and admitting that having employer-based healthcare is the problem. Look at a company like Whole Foods (founded by libertarian businessman John Mackey). They simply take a certain amount of money out of an employee's salary and put that money into a separate account that the employee can use to purchase the healthcare of their choice, and the employee's love it. Check out this Reason TV video. It was made a few years ago, but it's very interesting.
Deletehttp://reason.tv/video/show/natural-food-fight