CF, The Supreme Court is the highest court in the land. Today they said that the Affordable Care Act (which you call Obamacare) is Constitutional. No one can call it otherwise.

You may not like the law, but it is constitutional and the law of the United States of America. It must be obeyed just like any other law.

Congress has the power to make new laws regarding health care, but this law cannot be challenged in court. It is real! It is Constitutional!

Btw, the person who wrote the article says he has an 8th grade education and is a Constitutional scholar. His article makes him sound like he only finished kindergarten. I feel embarrassed for him, letting everyone see how ignorant he is.

The End.

It's interesting to me how the arguing tactic of both sides in US politics is so often "This thing I dislike is unconstitutional!" or "This thing I want is constitutional!". Again in this case they were on opposite sides of that question, and the justices fairly predictably (with some exceptions) voted along expected lines too, 5-4. And now the constitution has decided the matter? Give me a break, you don't care about what the constitution says, everyone just wants their way. It's politics.

Yeah, but I don't think it's fair to use Chess Fan, the neighborhood kook, who says half of what he says without meaning it just to get attention, as a barometer of trends in the US.

People like to argue with him because he's almost always wrong, never puts up a fight, and reinforces their prejudices that anyone with a dissenting view is an idiot. But if I agreed with you on an issue, say 80%, and disagreed 20%, why would I want to discuss it at all if I think you're thinking in your mind "Prove to me that you're not 20% Chess Fan." Not worth it.

Fair enough, though in this case I don't even necessarily disagree with Chess Fan (who is saying that the health care law thingie is unconstitutional), I just don't think it really matters what the US constitution says.

At one level you have a point. The political parties no longer care what the constitution actually says, they simply find ways to interpret it in a manner consistent with their political position. I have no doubt that if you look back 20-30 years you will find at least a couple of cases where both major parties have changed their views on what is constitutional.

Accurately or otherwise the Supreme Court generally tries to make constitutional sense of things that are brought before it. They act as the referees in the contest. Because of massive changes in technology and society since the writing of the constitution--heck, since 1980--that can be a challenge and they do occasionally get a bit creative. But the constitution never anticipated the nature of the world we live in today.

Now that the law has been declared constitutional I do hope that our law makers will get around to making it sensible. There are several good provisions in the law, but there is a lot of crap as well. Unfortunately those with the most to lose, the corporations, will fight much harder for their interests than those with the most to gain, the people.

It is with great sadness that I predict that any changes in the existing law will protect the interest of the few at the cost of the many.

Directly below, I have posted the link to a short; but also, "to the point" commentary article by Constitutional attorney Michael Connelly in which he talks about both WHY that Obamacare IS unconstitutional, and, why that all of this is just ANOTHER power grab by the United States goovernment.

Here is the link to the article:

http://beforeitsnews.com/story/2324/535/...l_Attorney.html


Chess Fan

I don't understand all the fuzz about getting medical help when you need it. I don't know the details of Obamacare, but it seems that even many people who would profit from it stem themselves against it. I guess it's the same as with religion for many people—all the generations (in my family or region or whatever) believed in it, so who am I not to do the same...

It is hard to understand because it isn't just one thing.

The only thing most people agree on is that the healthcare payment system in the U.S. is broken. There are lots of alternative models to replace it with, none of which have broad support.

People are always afraid of change. Whatever is implemented is a big change.

A large number of folks have simply decided that they do not trust the Federal gov't. They see management problems in defense, education, and the current gov't run systems and fear top down changes will only break the system further.

The myth of "rugged individualism" seems to be particularly strong in the U.S. right now. The idea that folks should take care of themselves and their families and not be asked to share with others is a common theme.

People who cannot do math. I saw it in a newspaper article yesterday. The woman interviewed has a chronic condition that costs her something like $1500 - $2000/month but all she could focus on was that insurance coverage would cost $500/month and her prescriptions were $150/month so she figures she's losing money. (Since she cannot pay most of the hospital costs she apparently considers them as non-existent. (And should the hospital costs be written off, they will get added to the bills of those with coverage who didn't want to be in the same risk pool as this woman.)

Industry is too influential. There are basically two interest groups in this discussion: the patients and the payment (not insurance*) industry. (No, seriously, the medical practitioners will be fine, but meaningful changes will put some administrators out of work.) For a variety of reasons the payment industry will be more effective at protecting their own interests than the people will be at protecting theirs. This makes it very likely that gov't mandated changes will in fact be worse for the people.

*people continue to call it medical "insurance" when it is not insurance, it is a payment processing system. Insurance is based on small pooled payments to off-set the generally low risk of large losses. Auto insurance pays large amounts if you are in an accident--it does not pay for oil changes or new tires. The medical payment system pays on ALL medical expenses whether they are genuine unexpected risks or routine "oil changes." Whatever your views on this issue generally, it is hard to have an intelligent debate about medical "insurance" while discussing medical payment plans. They are simply two different things.

In a Canadian poll a few years ago, people were asked to name the greatest Canadian. The winner wasn't a celebrity or Prime Minister, but a politician called Tommy Douglas. He won because he introduced the first single payer universal health care system back in the early 1960s. He was, of course, attacked for such a system and much of the rhetoric used is very similar to the rhetoric being used in the states now. And as history demonstrated, the rhetoric was just plain wrong.

Now we get inflamed rhetoric if someone even suggests changing the health care system (two-tier, private) that Douglas formed, and the ultimate scare tactic is brought out: Do you want us to become like the states?! If you Americans finally get a decent health care system, we're going to have to find a new scare tactic. Maybe we'll use an eastern bloc country--some of them have systems almost as bad.

Obamacare will quickly make Tommy Douglas look even better. Our system is bad, but Obamacare will be far, far worse.