Are you supportive of repealing this legislation?Originally Posted by Atypical
It sounds to me that Obama probably shouldn't have signed it. The guy had a democratic house and senate and probably figured that wasn't going to last long and rush to get something in place. How's that for a run on sentence?
Repealing Progress
This week, conservatives in the House and Senate plan to push to repeal the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, the health care reforms that President Obama signed into law last March. By repealing this legislation, these lawmakers plan to make good on a major campaign promise that they championed during the election season. But the truth is that repealing the legislation would undermine these same lawmakers' stated goals of fostering job growth and slashing the deficit. Most importantly, repealing the legislation would remove access to health care for millions of Americans, and continue to lead to the unnecessary deaths of tens of thousands of people. Furthermore, while the right may claim that Americans want to see the legislation repealed in favor of a more free-market approach to health care -- which has no history of working anywhere -- the truth is that more Americans want to see the law made more progressive, not less.
REPEAL AND REPLACE? : The Republican-controlled House of Representatives was originally scheduled to vote for repealing the federal heath care law on January 13, but the measure was postponed due to the tragic shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ) and eighteen others. In order to repeal the law, House Republicans have introduced H.R. 2, the Repealing The Job-Killing Health Care Law Act. While one of the rallying cries of the Republican Party was that it planned to "repeal and replace" the health care law, their bill includes no replacement for the expanded coverage and protections found within the text of the recently-passed federal health care legislation. The Washington Post reports that, in the "absence of a plan, Republican leaders nevertheless are eager to convey that they have ideas about health care," yet the only resolution they have drafted to accompany the repeal legislation simply lays out "broad, long-held GOP health-care goals, but no specifics." This lack of specificity about what exactly the Republicans will be replacing the bill with irked Dan Fonte, a constituent of Rep. Jim Renacci (R-OH), who confronted his representative during a recent town hall meeting. "Why don't you make a replacement plan before you repeal it so we can look at it?" he asked, receiving applause from the audience. "Let's think about this before we jump and do whatever we wanna do." Renacci had no response for Fonte. Of course, those pushing for repeal may not seriously be thinking about fixing the American health care system at all, considering they know that their repeal push will likely not make it past the U.S. Senate or the president's veto pen.
THE COSTS OF REPEAL: What would happen if the conservatives actually succeeded in repealing the health care law without replacing it with any meaningful legislation? For one, many of the GOP's own campaign promises of growing the economy and lowering the debt would be undermined. While House Republicans have given their legislation an Orwellian title that suggests that the health care law kill jobs, the opposite is actually true: repealing the bill would cost hundreds of thousands of jobs. "The claim has no justification," said Micah Weinberg, a senior research fellow at the New America Foundation's Health Policy Program, of the GOP's job-killing claims. As CAP's David M. Cutler notes in his report "Repealing Health Care Is A Job Killer ," repealing the law would slow annual job growth by "250,000 to 400,000 jobs annually." Meanwhile, the Congressional Budget Office estimates that repealing the bill would increase the deficit by $230 billion over the next ten years. Even more importantly, repealing the new law would cause 32 million Americans to lose health care coverage and put insurance companies back in charge by allowing them to discriminate against people with pre-existing conditions. This would be particularly tragic when looked at in the light of a new Health and Human Services study released this week that finds that nearly half of the population under the age of 65 has one or more pre-existing conditions. Additionally, as Richard Kirsch of the Roosevelt Institute writes, repealing the new law would lead to the death of 32,000 Americans every year simply because they couldn't afford to get the health care they need to live.
NOT WHAT AMERICANS WANT : The right often claims that it has a wide mandate from the American people to repeal the health care law and pursue a right-wing ideological approach that leaves more individuals to fend for themselves in the private market. Yet the most recent polling on the subject shows that this simply isn't true. An Associated Press-GfK poll released yesterday found that "only about 1 in 4" Americans support repealing the health care law (the strongest support for repeal is from Republicans, where 1 in 4 actually want to keep it). Meanwhile, polling suggests that Americans actually either support the law or want it to be made more progressive, not less. A CNN/Opinion Research poll published last month found that 56 percent of Americans either favor the law or want it to be more "liberal." A recently released Marist poll finds that more Americans want to change the law "so it does more" than want to "change it so that it does less" and that more Americans want to keep the law than replace it. Indeed, a large majority of Americans support progressive policies like adding a Medicare-style public option and allowing re-importation of drugs from Canada. What is clear from all this polling is that Americans are ready to fix our broken health care system and want to continue to make progress, not repeal the law and force the country down the old path with more than 50 million people uninsured and a health care system that is bankrupting Americans and causing thousands to die simply because they can't afford to live.
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Howard Dean:
"-- they're going to cover 30 million people who had no coverage. The biggest thing that Romney and Obama recognized when they did these bills is that until you get everyone in the system, you can't change the system. It's like squeezing a balloon, you're always going to have place where the water is going to pop out. To include everybody in the system -- they both chose to do that."
"This is the Republican solution, that's the irony of all this. Poor old Romney is getting hammered by his own people in the Republican primary for doing it. It's a Republican solution. It's a private enterprise solution. So the idea of saying it's a government takeover is just a plain lie. ... The Republicans are now pushing themselves further to the right, but they're going to keep marching in that direction until the electorate finally says no."
This I absolutely believe, and then the statist agenda will rear its ugly head again. And when people get sick of them marching left, the right will come back. You'd think one party would wise up to the game. It appears Obama has, but give him a democratic house and senate and watch what happens.
It is interesting that the Insurance lobbiests, who are typically in bed with the republicans, aren't pressuring them to leave it alone??? I mean, this was a big "win" for those insurance companies, right? Something doesn't make sense.
Repeal will not be happening. Howard Dean has it right in my opinion. keep moving forward and improve the bill over time much like what happened with Social Security.
More Howard Dean:
On the bill that passed not having a public option, which Dean supported:
"It was not reform. The reason I eventually supported it is that I looked at what was going on in Massachusetts, and I think that will ultimately lead to reform. But the people who will reform it will be the medical industry and the private sector, because the costs are going to force reform. In Massachusetts, they're talking about real reforms now.
On whether health care is too complicated for voters to understand:
"The details of almost everything that goes on are too complicated, that's why we have a representative government. They're not going to understand the details of health care anymore than a brain surgeon is going to understand how to fix his car. What we all do is very complicated. When we go to the auto mechanic, we're going to have a certain amount of trust in the auto mechanic, because we're certainly not going to learn how to do it ourselves. If you think of it that way, it's not that politicians are any smarter than anybody else, it's just that they spend a lot of time in committee learning the details, which is a good thing, that's what they're supposed to learn.
On the future of the health law:
"A lot of the bill, frankly, depends on the implementation and what happens over the next couple of years. In our favor is that I frankly think (Health and Human Services Sec. Kathleen) Sebelius is terrific. She is exactly the right person to do the implementation, and she's in the right agency and she has the experience. She knows the insurance industry cold because she's a former insurance commissioner. She was a governor, so she gets administration. And, she's pretty good at messaging, although the messaging has to come from the White House, because when you're the party in power, the president is completely in charge. So that's in our favor.
"The other thing that is in our favor is we can see in the future because of Massachusetts, they're four years ahead of us. They really are now having some serious discussions about how to bring costs under control, which there was very little serious discussion of in either the Massachusetts bill or the federal bill. So I think there's hope. This could lead to real reform. It's just going to take some time and it's going to be a lot more painful than it needs to be."
Thanks for the Howard Dean info. I loved the guy - a doctor as president. That resonated with me. Then he went on that rant that Howard still plays occasionally.
"Real reform". It would nice if the public actually knew the real reason for such escalating costs.
I think I finally understand why republicans despise this legislation.
One, is the point addressed above. Can the Federal Government force you to buy a product or a service. Secondly, and this resonates with me, is demonstrated in this link from the Center of American Progress http://www.americanprogress.org/issu...fographic.html.
In as much as I appreciate the clarity of the graphic in this link, if you look toward the bottom of Part 2, it clearly cites that all must pay into the system to keep costs down - the healthy help pay for the sick. Really? Can one say "redistribution"? It's not like many of us have problems paying our own bills lol.
I know the term "government take over of healthcare" is far overused and somewhat misleading, but if you think about the legislation along these two lines, maybe there is some truth to it?? The bill "forces" the healthy to purchase coverage to offset costs for the sick. Redistribution is a key liberal belief. Governments power over its citizen is a key liberal belief (unstated, but obvious). It is no wonder why the house republicans want to repeal it. I understand. It is indeed an erosion of citizens rights by the powerful government.
By Ian Millhiser | January 18, 2011
Clearly Constitutional
A Primer on the Constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act
Nearly three dozen judges have now considered challenges to the landmark Affordable Care Act and the overwhelming majority of these cases have been dismissed. Nevertheless, a single outlier judge in Virginia has embraced the meritless arguments against the new health care law and another judge in Florida also appears poised to break with the overwhelming consensus of his colleagues.
With only a few exceptions, these lawsuits principally challenge the Affordable Care Act’s minimum coverage provision—the provision requiring most Americans to either carry health insurance or pay slightly more income taxes—falsely arguing that Congress lacks the constitutional authority to enact such a provision. It is true that Congress’s authority is limited to an itemized list of powers contained in the text of the Constitution itself, but while Congress’s powers are not unlimited, they are still quite sweeping. There is no doubt that the Affordable Care Act fits within these enumerated powers in three ways, as this issue brief will demonstrate.
Congress has broad power to regulate the national economy
A provision of the Constitution known as the “commerce clause” gives Congress power to “regulate commerce … among the several states.” And there is a long line of Supreme Court decisions holding that Congress has broad power to enact laws that substantially affect prices, marketplaces, or other economic transactions. Because health care comprises approximately 17 percent of the national economy, it is impossible to argue that a bill regulating the national health care market does not fit within Congress’s power to regulate commerce.
Nevertheless, opponents of the Affordable Care Act claim that a person who does not buy health insurance is not engaged in any economic “activity” and therefore cannot be compelled to perform an undesired act. Even if these opponents were correct that the uninsured are not active participants in the health care market— and they are active, of course, every time they become ill and seek medical care—nothing in the Constitution supports this novel theory. Indeed, this theory appears to have been invented solely for the purpose of this litigation. Congress has enacted countless laws which would be forbidden under this extra-constitutional theory:
■Guns: President George Washington signed a law that required much of the country to purchase a firearm, ammunition, and other equipment in case they needed to be called up for militia service. Many of the members of Congress who voted for this mandate were members of the Philadelphia Convention that wrote the Constitution.
■Civil rights: The Civil Rights Act of 1964 compelled business owners to engage in transactions they considered undesirable—hiring and otherwise doing business with African Americans.
■Insurance mandates: The Affordable Care Act is not even the only federal law requiring someone to carry insurance. The Price-Anderson Act of 1957 requires nuclear power plants to purchase liability insurance and the Flood Disaster Protection Act requires many homeowners to carry flood insurance.
■Other mandates: Other laws require individuals to perform jury service, file tax returns, and register for selective service.
The minimum coverage provision is the keystone that holds the Affordable Care Act together
The Constitution also gives Congress the power “[t]o make all laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into execution” its power to regulate interstate commerce. As Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia explains, this means that “where Congress has the authority to enact a regulation of interstate commerce, it possesses every power needed to make that regulation effective.”
The act eliminates one of the insurance industry’s most abusive practices—denying coverage to patients with pre-existing conditions. This ban cannot function if patients are free to enter and exit the insurance market at will. If patients can wait until they get sick to buy insurance, they will drain all the money out of an insurance plan that they have not previously paid into, leaving nothing left for the rest of the plan’s consumers.
Seven states enacted a pre-existing conditions law without also passing an insurance coverage requirement, and all seven states saw health insurance premiums spiral out of control. In some of these states, the individual insurance market collapsed.There is a way out of this trap, however. Massachusetts enacted a minimum coverage provision in 2006 to go along with its pre-existing conditions provision and the results were both striking and immediate. Massachusetts’ premiums rapidly dropped by 40 percent.
In other words, because the only way to make the pre-existing conditions law effective is to also require individuals to carry insurance, that requirement easily passes Scalia’s test.
The link between the minimum coverage provision and the Affordable Care Act’s insurance regulations also sets this law aside from other hypothetical laws requiring individuals to purchase other goods or services. The national market for vegetables will not collapse if Congress does not require people to purchase broccoli, nor will Americans cease to be able to obtain automobiles absent a law requiring the purchase of cars from General Motors. Accordingly, a court decision upholding the Affordable Care Act would not provide a precedent enabling Congress to compel all Americans to purchase broccoli or cars, despite the law’s opponents’ claims to the contrary.
Congress has broad leeway in how it raises money
Congress also has the authority to “lay and collect taxes” under the Constitution. This power to tax also supports the minimum coverage provision, which works by requiring individuals who do not carry health insurance to pay slightly more income taxes. Taxpayers who refuse insurance must pay more in taxes while those who do carry insurance are exempt from this new tax. For this reason, the law is no different than dozens of longstanding tax exemptions, including the mortgage interest tax deduction, which allows people who take out home mortgages to pay lower taxes than people who do not.
Opponents of the Affordable Care Act respond that the minimum coverage provision somehow ceases to be a tax because the new law does not use the word “tax” to describe it, but this distinction is utterly meaningless. Nothing in the Constitution requires Congress to use certain magic words to invoke its enumerated powers. And no precedent exists suggesting that a fully valid law somehow ceases to be constitutional because Congress gave it the wrong name.
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