Guide to the Healthcare Supreme Court Case

[noname2200]

Kasz216 said:

B+C) Actually, i never conceded that. For extreme cases some guy who's never been to a doctor could walk out in front of a subway train and be instantly killed on the scene. Or jump off a bridge and commit suicide. There is only one inevitability in life... and that is it's end.


What I DID argue was that even if something WAS legal because it was inevitable ONLY the inevitable could be covered. Otherwise you'd be saying that Government for example could mandate us to buy 12 tons of broccoli a month because... everybodys got to eat!  Though nobody is going to eat that much.

Furthermore, I'd note that you are using healthcare as a catch all, for dozens of things. Like Food. Or like how buying or selling anything (Practically inevitable) is all broadly commerce.

Additionally, when you pay for health insurance. Each unit of health insurance covers you for THAT month. Therefore if you don't benefit from services that month. There is no inevitability.

Also, I don't advocate an "Eat what you kill" system. I think everyone SHOULD have health insurance.(Though everyone should decide they want it not forced into it or less preferably but more acceptable, a proper government run healthcare system that would actually be legal. Paid out of the general budget, with no special taxes towards it.)

I'm arguing the law here.



As for the Car insurance thing... you missed the point. Car insurance is legal because driving isn't a right... if Driving WAS a right it would be illegal to force people to pay for car insurance.

If Healthcare is a right. It would be illegal to force people to pay for health insurance. Because it's a right.

You can't charge people for rights, because rights are inherent. If you are fined for something, and you claim freedom of speech, your fine is revoked and waived.

Therefore if someone didn't get insurance you couldn't fine them.

Except that he didn't spring fully-formed as an adult from the ground. And I'd be very interested to meet this adult American who's made it past his minority without once using healthcare. It's an interesting hypothetical, but I sincerely doubt it stretches any further than that.

Kasz216 said:

What I DID argue was that even if something WAS legal because it was inevitable ONLY the inevitable could be covered. Otherwise you'd be saying that Government for example could mandate us to buy 12 tons of broccoli a month because... everybodys got to eat!  Though nobody is going to eat that much.

 

And what's the legal principle behind this argument? All I see is a policy argument. You're again trying to use the slippery slope argument ("if we let gays marry, how can we stop people from marrying their dogs?!"). Your position is that that "if something WAS legal because it was inevitable ONLY the inevitable could be covered."

Why? Under what constitutional, statutory, or even judicial rule? I can't think of it; if you can find one, I'll be happy to change my tune.

Kasz216 said:

Furthermore, I'd note that you are using healthcare as a catch all, for dozens of things. Like Food. Or like how buying or selling anything (Practically inevitable) is all broadly commerce.

 

I'm afraid I don't understand this point, or how it relates to the discussion as a whole.

Kasz216 said:

Additionally, when you pay for health insurance. Each unit of health insurance covers you for THAT month. Therefore if you don't benefit from services that month. There is no inevitability.

 

Now THIS is the strongest argument you've made so far. It's also one of the bigger reasons why I'm not completely convinced of the constitutionality of the law, although I still lean towards rather than against. The greatest reason why I can see this point being insufficiently persuasive in court comes back to the fact that medical emergencies are, almost by definition, unpredictable, so engaging in ex post facto analysis strikes me as flawed.

Kasz216 said:

As for the Car insurance thing... you missed the point. Car insurance is legal because driving isn't a right... if Driving WAS a right it would be illegal to force people to pay for car insurance.

If Healthcare is a right. It would be illegal to force people to pay for health insurance. Because it's a right.

 

Actually, I don't believe this is true at all. If driving was a right, it would still impact interstate commerce, and therefore fall under the commerce clause. There might be more restrictions on the mandate, most likely that the impoverished can forego insurance at their option, but again, the commerce clause does not contain an exemption that says that economic activities that are otherwise constitutional rights are exempt from the commerce clause. Those intervening rights might restrict the applicability of the commerce clause (again, see the above example), but unless the intervening right is some absolute that states it's impervious to other regulation, I don't see the issue.

Consider, for example, how even the Free Exercise Clause does not constitutionally protect a religious group's business from being subject to most regulations that apply to non-religious businesses, and most (all?) of those narrow exceptions are specifically carved out in the statutes for political rather than constitutional reasons. The Catholic Church isn't going to get its way on the contraceptive issue because of the Free Exercise Clause, it's going to get it because of political pressure.

Kasz216 said:

You can't charge people for rights, because rights are inherent. If you are fined for something, and you claim freedom of speech, your fine is revoked and waived.

Therefore if someone didn't get insurance you couldn't fine them.

 

This is factually untrue. Demonstrators who violate time and place restrictions don't get off scots-free just because they were exercising their free speech rights. These folks have to pay the fine, just like any other violator. Rights are not absolute, and they are far from immune to regulation. I suspect this is at the heart of our disagreement.