SCOTUS upholds Obamacare

[CharliePC]

Health insurance, in and of itself, isn't the problem with our health care. Laws that restrict insurance to just one state, mandates on what MUST be insured, and, because of tax incentives- insurance is provided by a third party are the problems. Take these three away and health insurance, like auto and home insurance, becomes just another commodity that responds to market forces.

Our health care/insurance is buggered for a reason. Statists for generations have wanted nanny-state gov't run health care. They've purposely crafted the laws so that health insurance is expensive and confusing.

[JoBa]

It is health insurance that is driving health care costs through the roof. As it is now, we have not just the cost of health care to control, but the cost of health insurance to control as well. Two separate entities that have nothing in common with each other, yet one has ended up in a position where the other can not function without it.

Like I said earlier, it all started when government gave free, or close to it, health insurance to it's employees, that insurance caused health care costs to climb to the point that "civilians" could no longer afford health care, so they too had to purchase health care insurance, at a much higher rate than government employees were paying.

This left millions of people who could not afford health care insurance, so they turned to hospital emergency rooms for their primary health care.

Now, the government that started this whole mess by bringing in the insurance companies, is forcing all of us to pay for the health care of everyone else, by forcing us to purchase insurance and forcing those who can't, to buy it from the government. We will pay the difference in the form of higher taxes that are certain to follow.

It used to be simple. If you got sick, you went to your doctor or a hospital of your own choosing. They took care of you then sent you a bill, that in most cases, was affordable. You either paid all of it, or you spread it out into payments you could handle. It was usually paid off in a few months, even poor people could handle the cost of medical care. Peoples health care costs were based on what they, and they alone, used. It was not based on what other people used.

With health insurance came the huge piles of paperwork. Doctors had to either hire more people to handle it all, or pay another company to handle it. This was the beginning of skyrocketing health care. What once took only a Doctor and his receptionist, who also did the billing, now takes a team of around ten to twenty employees, and that's just in the doctors office. That same procedure, also takes ten or twenty people in an insurance office to handle the doctors claim for your boo boo.

Then we also needed a government bureaucracy to insure that everyone was doing what they were supposed to be doing, add another hundred or so people who make more than anyone, including the doctor in the doctors office you went to for your problem.

Are you starting to grasp why health care is not affordable to everyone anymore?

If you think this latest government orchestrated health care debacle comedy is going to solve our medical care issues, you better think some more on that. There will still be millions of Americans who will not have any medical care at all. Emergency rooms will still be jammed, and costs will skyrocket into the stratosphere. There will be no "logic" to any of it.

I owned a custom picture framing business for the bulk of my working career. Custom picture frames, by their very nature (all that it takes to make one) are expensive, starting usually around fifty to a hundred dollars.

What if the government mandated that every citizen must have picture framing insurance, and that they must purchase at least one per year?

Do you think people would settle for a hundred dollar frame when all they had to do is pay a ten dollar co-pay and they could have a thousand dollar frame?

Do you think I would even offer hundred dollar frames anymore?

-John

[CharliePC]

But WHY is it that health insurance is so overly complicated and expensive while auto and home insurance isn't? How is it that you go to a mechanic to get most car problems fixed without interacting with your auto insurance while every visit to a doctor involves insurance? Ditto home repairs.

The primary reason; health insurance isn't bought by the person who uses it.

The American tradition is for companies to provide insurance to their employees. This started with wage freezes in WW2 but continues largely because of tax laws. Health insurance is tax deductible if provided by the employer but not when purchased by individuals. In comes the axiom- you get more of the activity you encourage and less of the activity you discourage.

Each time an effort is made by Republicans to make health insurance purchased by individuals tax deductible, on par with employee provided insurance, it is fought tooth and nail by Democrats. Why? They want health insurance to provided by someone, anyone other than the person who uses it.

Since health insurance is purchased by entity A (employer) and used by entity B (employee and family) the two aren't coordinated and often work against each other. The employee isn't motivated to ask "how much is this procedure" or "is this test necessary" just "is it covered?"

When there is a problem with my house, I ask myself if accessing home insurance to pay repairs will raise my insurance rates. If so, would it be better to pay it out of pocket or get insurance to pay the bill. Why? Because I write a check for home insurance. My behavior dictates directly how much I pay in premiums, therefore I check prices and needs. Health insurance isn't the same- nobody asks if using it will raise rates. It's a totally different dynamic because it's a benefit provided to you by someone else. Sure health care rates keep raising but not to just the people who abuse the insurance while healthy people see no increase. Actions don't have the financial consequences as with other forms of insurance.

Imagine if health insurance existed mostly to protect against catastrophic loss and was accessed only for large, unexpected expenses? People going to the doctor for stitches and such would pay for it out of their pocket with no need for insurance. Doctors offices would need near the staff they have to push papers. The cost of a visit would be a fraction of what it is now.

There are other items that make health insurance a mess (mandates of what must be covered, and state line restrictions) but that health insurance is not bought by the user is the main problem.

[Old All American]

I say we change the name of the Supreme Court Of The United States (SCOTUS) to something more appropriate: Supreme Court of Retards of the United States (SCROTUS). I think it has a ring to it. From here on out I shall refer to them in that acronym. For the politically correct we shall call them the Supreme Court of Rejects Of The United States.

[recondo82]

Question for recondo or any other lawyers. The administration argued it was Constitutional under the commerce clause, not as a tax. The SCOTUS ruled that it was Unconstitutional under commerce clause but was ok as a tax. That argument was not presented. How can the SCOTUS make the administrations case for them? Don't they have to stay within the confines of the arguments?

Sent from my DROIDX using Tapatalk 2

In general, courts will stay within the confines of the arguments presented; however, any court may make its ruling based on their independent findings outside the arguments. State Courts and most Federal Circuit Courts of Appeals will not go outside the box. SCOTUS has gone outside the box before, so the opinion in this case is not really surprising. I don't agree with the ruling, but it was within their power to use that argument.

[Old All American]

The decision didn't shock me; I've lost faith in SCROTUS a long time ago. What surprised me was that Roberts was the swing vote instead of Kennedy. That was a sucker punch in the gut to me. But goes to show you can't put your faith in people; it would have been nice to have had a neat and tidy Supreme Court decision, now the ball is back in our court - the people's = where it was all the time anyway. Time for us to do our job and throw the bums out.

[IEDmagnet]

The decision didn't shock me; I've lost faith in SCROTUS a long time ago. What surprised me was that Roberts was the swing vote instead of Kennedy. That was a sucker punch in the gut to me. But goes to show you can't put your faith in people; it would have been nice to have had a neat and tidy Supreme Court decision, now the ball is back in our court - the people's = where it was all the time anyway. Time for us to do our job and throw the bums out.

Ah, but many have said that Roberts just handed Romney the baton to run to the finish line in plainview of Obama without being fully noticed. It was either an extremely smart (though underhanded) political move, or an act of cowardice and display of folding under peer pressure.

[JoBa]

I, for a minute, while trying to find some humor in all this, thought that instead of referring to them as the SCOTUS, that we should start referring to them as the SCROTUM, but then, that would seem like we think they have balls, which of course is just silly.

-John