| Kasz216 said: Well first off.... A) Does a person inevitably need healthcare? There are lots of people who live in the US who use/ don't need modern healthcare. |
Yes. I can not see the other side of this argument. Illness and injury strike routinely and unpredictably, regardless of age/gender/race/etc. When they do, we need health care. The alternative is to live like our ancestors, and die before hitting 35. You'll be very hard-pressed to find an American who has not used our healthcare system. The most fortunate ones can go years without employing it for themselves, but they will inevitably need medical care.
| Kasz216 said: B) Does the person inevitably need healthcare NOW. Again, MOST people don't need healthcare until there 40's or 50's. You are forcing people to pay for a service they probably won't need for years to come. Well, most people don't even need it then truth be told. |
I disagree with this assertion in its entirety. It is utter idiocy to voluntarily forego health care even when in one's 20's. Leaving aside the risk of unexpected catastrophe, not utilizing preventative medicine routinely leads to higher costs in the long term, as problems which could have been treated easily and cheaply balloon into long-term and expensive problems.
Leaving this aside, you're ignoring the fact that even people in their 20's and 30's, who are statistically the least likely to utilize immediate medical services for themselves (and I couch that purposefully) are still quite likely, statistically speaking, to beging raising family(ies). These offspring will inevtibably and indisputably require health care. At the moment, most of these children are covered by the parents' insurance, or by the state, each of which is definitely economic activity.
As for folks who are in their 40's and up, I can't understand how these people don't need health care. It's no coincidence that health care costs are mushrooming in lockstep with our aging population. EVERY American needs access to health care. And right now, they all get it, albeit to differing degrees. Which brings us to...
| Kasz216 said: C) The whole point healthcare can exist is because... on average the costs are MORE then inevitably paid for. More people DON'T need health insurance then do... until they hit Medicare. The fact that insurance companies turn a profit completely defeats the arguement that most people NEED the insurance. Since if that was the case, no profit would be turned. Consider healthcare companies turn a profit... and yet 25% of all medical costs come from 1% of the population. It's a hard arguement to make that individually people need healthcare insurance to invariably pay for the services they need. In reality it's a very small bunch that requires health insurance. |
You're grossly misunderstanding how insurance, health and otherwise, works. Insurance is not some sock you put your pennies into, and then empty on the day you get hit by a drunk or discover you have cancer. Insurance is nothing more or less than a communal method of lessening the financial risk of encountering a disastrous event. Without it, only the extremely wealthy could ever afford to stay overnight in the hospital, let alone receive life-saving medical treatment and access to pharmaceutical drugs.
The simple truth of the matter is that almost all of us would have to declare bankruptcy if we ever broke a bone or suffered a stroke. Insurance is meant to combat exactly that risk. If you're lucky, you'll never get back all the money you spent. But it's a gamble to not have it. And, to bring us back to the main point, if you don't have insurance it's a gamble that the taxpayer/hospital/some other third party is forced to pay off in your stead.
As an aside, if you're arguing that insurance companies generally charge too much, you'll find that we agree. But that really is a different topic to the one at hand.
| Kasz216 said: D) Probably not constitutionally relevent, but I don't think you've thought out the monetary penalty. It's not for people to pay for their own inevitable costs. Afterall, if they can't pay for treatment because they didn't buy health insurance.... they aren't going to be able to pay for the penalty. This is going to be increasingly be the case as you will no longer be able to charge people more for being high risk... and it's in fact, kinda the whole point of the healthcare bill. Those who are healthy and don't need healthcare insurance will be subsidizing it for those who do. Essentially paying for something they probably WON'T need. |
Again, insurance does not work like this. Otherwise, each individual would just keep a separate bank account for medical needs, and keep their fingers crossed that it's enough.
That said, the law is not targetted at those who don't have insurance because they can not afford insurance. My understanding is that this point is addressed directly in the law: those people with insufficient income are not subject to the penalty. The law is instead targetted at all those folks who can afford insurance, but are choosing to gamble that they'll never need it, probably in the hope that they'll buy in just in time to get sick or hurt.
| Kasz216 said: E) Lets extend this further then... well food is one... but there is another thing. Money. We inevitably need money... afterall if you argue we inevitably need healthcare, we inevitably need money to PURCHASE healthcare right? And if we can't, the government provides us with taxbreaks and vouches and programs essentially paying for our healthcare... with their own money. Since we earn money through work. It seems like (not that i think the government would ever actually do it... well any time soon) your legal preceidence gives the government the right regulate where people work, and force everybody to take jobs. |
The slippery slope argument. However, money, and the making of it, is extremely regulated. Minimum wage, overtime, securities disclosures, interest, dividends, inheritances...any and all forms of making money are already subject to a treatise's worth of federal regulations. So money can't be a slippery slope argument, because it fell down the slope around the time the Constitution was drafted.
To answer your hypothetical though, this legal sorta-precedent would only give the government that power if it did not run afoul of some other legal or constitutional restriction. I'm pretty confident that such exists. If not, we'll make one. Probably after hanging the idiot who proposed said law in the first place.
| mrstickball said: Will, or has, Elana Kagan recused herself from this case? I remember there being a lot of hubbub about her doing so. |
She has not.
