Why the Supreme Court Should Kill ‘Obamacare’

By on March 27, 2012 in News 18

ObamacareToday, the anti-Obamacare protest is happening in front of the U.S. Supreme Court, and it is hearing arguments as to why the Affordable Healthcare Act (a.k.a. “Obamacare”) should be thrown out. Dave Lindorff writes on Counterpunch on why “Obamacare” should be repealed to instead force Americans to decide that Medicare should be available to everyone as it would reduce our costs substantially:

The US Supreme Court has a chance to do the people of America a big favor, perhaps atoning at last for its shameful betrayal of the electoral system in 2000 when a conservative majority stole the Florida, and national election, for George W. Bush, and for the liberal-led and equally shameful betrayal of fundamental property rights in the Kelo v New London case that, in 2005, upheld the public theft of private homes in Connecticut on behalf of a government-backed resort development. The court can atone for these betrayals by declaring the ramshackle, corrupt, hugely expensive and cynically misnamed Affordable Care Act to be unconstitutional.

The act, pushed through a Democratic Congress by President Obama in 2010, is a disaster, a cobbled-together set of measures that was fatally corrupted by the insurance lobby and other parts of the nation’s medical-industrial complex, which leaves millions uninsured, continues to tether workers to their employers like indentured servants, and undermines the Medicare program, which should be the cornerstone of a real health reform.

By killing this monstrosity of political expedience and lobbyist strong-arming, the Supreme Court’s conservative wing could give us a good chance to finally move the country to a real national health reform which would reduce costs substantially, provide quality health care to all, and finally drive a stake through the heart of the health insurance industry, the real “vampire squid” of American capitalism which has been sucking money out of American’s wallets and driving many into bankruptcy for decades (family health crises are the major single cause of bankruptcies and homes foreclosures in the country) …

Read More: Counterpunch

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  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Iaminnocenttheblood-Ofthisjustmanyouseetoit/100002857705077 Iaminnocenttheblood Ofthisjust

    In abstract, I’m for a total “Nationalisation” of health care.  Doctors operating at reasonable salary, taxes that are nothing compared to insurance costs providing it and for those unable to afford.  No worries of lawsuit, but enough internal policing and peer review to keep any bad doctors from getting away with too much….  Like if you get hurt by a botched operation you don’t (and NO ONE ever did, that was a tort reform lie) get $30 million for them leaving a scalpel in you, but you don’t lose your job/have to sue for decades, they fix it and reasonably compensate.  Setting it up could be financed by “Charter Revokal” of insurance companies, taking all their assets.  The shock to the “Rich Elite” would disrupt their lobbying power also…

    But this would take decades of no health care for enough people to “Backlash” it.

    Kinda like that my employer has to provide it, looking forward to having my teeth fixed, did the critical ones earlier, doing the critical ones this year, not using pliers.

  • http://www.ContraControl.com/ Zenc

    All other issues aside (and there are plenty of other issues) the government simply doesn’t have the Constitutional (or moral) authority to require me to purchase insurance from some third-party corporation.

    It’s arguable that they have the right to tax me in some way to cover medical costs. It is also arguable that they can require me to carry insurance if I want do things that expose other people to risk like driving on public roads, flying airplanes through the sky, etc.

    However, forcing me as an individual to buy an insurance product (from an amazingly corrupted regulated “private” industry) as a matter of course, is simply not within their power.

    Don’t get me wrong, I’m confident that the Supreme Court will find a way to justify it if they want to. However, these tortured legal justifications are the sorts of things that have eroded the legitimacy of our government to the point that it’s hard to counter the arguments that it’s entirely bereft of such a quality.

    What people frequently fail to consider is that Laws aren’t mere “suggestions” they’re requirements backed up by bullets.

    Don’t do what a judge decides the law says, and they’ll send guys with guns to hold you captive til you decide to comply, plus a little longer for their inconvenience.

    Decide that you’re not going to allow them to abridge your freedom and they’ll flat kill you for your resistance.

    I suppose that you just have to kill some people in order to help them…

     

  • Redacted

    Of course “Obamacare” is a bad idea. Did we really expect Obama to ever do anything competently? But are we really supposed to look to the right for any sort of guidance? Remember that those are the people who want to burn gays at the stake, and think that the Bible is a science book. I wouldn’t look to them for guidance to order a pizza, let alone health care.

    • Eric_D_Read

      Keep in mind that the individual mandate was a fine conservative solution to the healthcare question when it was proposed by Republicans and “conservative” think tanks like the Heritage Foundation. It’s only totalitarian socialism because Team Blue actually implemented it.

  • Haystack

    The way I understand it, for it to be feasible to pass a law that prevented insurers from denying coverage to people with pre-existing conditions, the act also had to force everyone to buy insurance so that they wouldn’t simply wait until they got sick to do so. Now, if the Supreme Court struck down the latter, the former would still be law, correct? Insurers would no longer be able to discriminate AND you wouldn’t be forced to buy insurance that you can’t afford to use. 

    Sounds like a pretty sweet deal to me. 

    Costs of private coverage would, of course, rise as a result, but as the article suggests, this would only create further impetus for publicly-funded or publicly-subsidized alternatives, which is closer to what we really wanted to begin with. 

    • http://www.ContraControl.com/ Zenc

      Yeah, I was really hoping that they would have passed a Medicaid “Opt In” or “Buy In”. Such a plan was even endorsed by the AMA, as I understand it.

      Properly structured premiums would have solved a variety of problems.

      Instead we got something that actually caused medical insurance companies’ stock values to go up, Not a good sign that the bill was good for consumers.

      • Haystack

        It illustrates that politics is really just the process whereby the elites divide up the spoils amongst themselves, and how a given law effects the average person is of secondary importance. Media campaigns have replaced military ones, but it’s still just contest of wealth and power between rival interest groups in which we play the role of cannon fodder. 

        • Eric_D_Read

          Nailed it.

  • Lifobryan

    I’m quite torn by this situation. On one hand, I genuinely think “Obamacare” is a horrendous pile of well-intentioned but misguided, corrupted laws stitched & stapled together in frankenstein fashion … with the bloated Body parts of bureaucratic agencies under an insurance-corporate-lobbyist Head. This unholy (frankenstein) monster definitely needs to be struck down with pitchforks & torches. 

    But on the other hand …. I really REALLY don’t want the unholy (vampire) Republicans to be able to claim a victory. 

    One side wants to force us to give our money to insurance corporations with little guarantee of actual healthcare in return. The other side wants to bleed us dry by sucking our money upward into the corporate 1% via “tax cuts for the super-wealthy” so we all die of depletion before getting healthcare. 

    It’s one monster vs another .. the Undead vs the Unalive. Bring on the werewolves … at least they are buff with hot pecs. 

    • Redacted

      Well intentioned but misguided seems to define the Democratic party. Really Liberalism in general. 

  • godozo

    I like the idea of getting rid of something bad to replace something good. Everything talked about in the article has been noted by myself and others better known and more read than I (thank goodness).

    The problem (as I see it) is that, in the United States, all we’ll get is a resumption of the original “status quo” that has gotten us to this point in the first place. Add into that the idea of us having gone into a simulation of universal healthcare (the present system would have worked anytime between the early fifties and the day before Hinkley’s attempt on Reagan) only to go back, and we may no longer be able to consider universal health care (even though it seems that a single payer option has been admitted as fully constitutional by those who oppose the present mess).

  • Hadrian999

    it’s going to get struck down, the republican party owns more justices than the democrats do, merits of the case are irrelevant beyond that .

    • Eric_D_Read

      Maybe not. Republican shot callers secretly love the individual mandate. After all, they’re the ones who thought it up 20ish years ago. They just hate it on TV because Team Blue implemented it.

  • oldbroad

    What they need to look at is what makes medical coverage so expensive, the cost of education, the confusing billing, malpractice insurance.  I don’t think Nationalism will work in the USA and I don’t think being mandated to buy is the way either.  Perhaps doing an Americorps or Teach for America type program for students wanting to get into the medical field to help pay for school and having more access to community health centers.  Emergency Rooms cost so much more for the uninsured.  Lawyers, medical professionals, the government all really need to work this out .  Perhaps taking some parts of what works best in other countries would help too, in the UK doctors get a bonus for their patients being healthy!

  • Okarin

    the ‘care’ in ‘obamacare’ is ambiguous as it’s not the health of the people it cares about but the $$$ for the ‘health’ companies

  • http://profiles.google.com/dsmeek40 scott meek

    I don’t pretend to know a lot about Obamacare, and I’m generally a supporter of the President, but I think it’d probably be best to let this one fail.  I am a supporter of the single payer system, which I’ve essentially been a part of my entire life as a member of the military and now a retired military and current government employee.  If anyone cares to ask, my healthcare has been excellent now for 25 years.

  • Apathesis

    How anyone can be in support of something that will only benefit corrupt insurance providers is mind-boggling.  Then again, most of these fucking idiots listen to Nicki Minaj and Lil’ Wayne…

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