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Jewish World Review Oct. 18, 2010/ 10 Mar-Cheshvan, 5771 Healthcare: ‘Alice in Wonderland’ vs. The Constitution By Arnold Ahlert
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
Apparently U.S. District Judge Roger Vinson is a fan of Lewis Carroll. Last Thursday, he allowed part of the lawsuit challenging the Constitutionality of ObamaCare to proceed, dismissing Democrat objections as an "Alice in Wonderland" defense of the statute. The two major challenges he allowed to go forward are critical: one, whether or not the federal government has the right to mandate individual Americans to purchase health insurance or face a fine; and two, whether or not the feds can require states to expand their Medicaid program.
It is refreshing to read the statements of a judge who clearly understands the fraud Democrats have perpetrated with respect to the health care bill. When Democrats were ramming this bill through Congress, the Obama administration defended the individual mandate by calling it a "penalty," dismissing Republican charges that forcing someone to purchase something against their will was a "tax." Yet as soon as Eric Holder's Justice Department was forced to defend the mandate in court, they decided that Republicans were right after all, citing the legality of the feds to impose taxes.
Judge Vinson was having none of it. "Congress should not be permitted to secure and cast politically difficult votes on controversial legislation by deliberately calling something one thing, after which the defenders of that legislation take an "Alice-in-Wonderland" tack and argue in court that Congress really meant something else entirely, thereby circumventing the safeguard that exists to keep their broad power in check," he said.
In other words, you can't tell outright lies to the American public or your fellow Congressmen in order to pass legislation.
The judge then issued the first critical ruling: because the individual mandate is indeed a penalty, Justice must defend it based on the Commerce Clause, not Congress' ability to impose taxes. This is huge. Going forward, the Justice Department will be forced to contend that Americans can be required, not to have a voluntary commercial transaction regulated, but to engage in commerce, period.
How serious is this? If the Supreme Court decides--and this case is undoubtedly headed there--that the involuntary engagement in a commercial transaction is Constitutional, America as we know it will cease to exist. For all intents and purposes, such an interpretation of the Commerce Clause would grant an imperial Congress virtually limitless powers based upon what progressives consider a "substantial effect on interstate commerce."
SOTUS has been down this road before, and the results are not encouraging. In 1942, Roscoe Filburn was ordered not grow wheat in excess of limits set by the 1938 Agricultural Adjustment Act, despite the fact that the wheat was grown on his own land and limited to his personal use. The court's "reasoning?" Control over the entire supply of wheat in the country could not be achieved without control over the individual supply, and if enough farmers grew wheat for their personal use, such use would "impact" nationwide commerce.
Yet even in that case, the activity which the Court sought to regulate was pre-existing. What this Congress and administration is contending is that Americans can be compelled to engage in commercial activity simply because they exist, because if they don't, their refusal would have a "substantial effect" on the ability of ObamaCare to be economically viable. The fact that a substantial majority of Americans find the health care bill repugnant would be rendered officially irrelevant--along with our democratic republic.
Judge Vinson's second ruling was equally monumental: the part of the bill which mandates that individual states must expand their Medicaid program to include more people can also be challenged. This pernicious bit of nonsense could be economically devastating to states already struggling with budget deficits. According to the National Association of State Budget Officers, spending on Medicaid already accounts for an average of one-fifth of state expenditures--before the health care bill adds another 16 million people to the 59 million already eligible for the program by raising the eligibility threshold to 133% of the federal poverty level in 2014. The feds will fully subsidize these new beneficiaries until 2016--at which point federal outlays will be lowered and states will be expected to make up the difference.
The fact that many state budgets are already imploding--largely due to Medicaid--is irrelevant to progressives, who apparently believe American taxpayers have an unlimited supply of funds to underwrite their socialist/marxist agenda. Apparently so is the fact that 40% of American doctors currently won't accept Medicaid patients at all, due to that program's low pay out rates. That last bit is key--for some unfathomable reason, progressives seem to believe that people having health insurance is the same thing as having access to health care.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
No doubt the same people who believe health care is a right consider it unseemly that doctors consider making a profit part of the equation for running a business. Too bad they don't feel the same way about lawyers. In 2700 hundred pages of mandates, not a single word regarding tort reform was included, even though malpractice insurance and unconscionable jury awards are substantial contributors to the overall cost of health care.
With his ruling on this particular issue, Judge Vinson demonstrates an understanding of the difference between federally-imposed, one-size-fits-all spending mandates and the ability of states to write their own rules regarding Medicaid spending and eligibility formulas. If there is one thing the public can thank the Obama administration and our Democratically-controlled Congress for, it is a level of arrogance that has re-ignited a long-overdue push for states' rights. Many Americans are appalled by the left's ambition to turn fifty separate constituencies into chattels of Washington, D.C.
The same Washington, D.C. which has racked up over a trillion dollars in deficit spending for the second year in a row.
ObamaCare is an unmitigated disaster-in-the-making. If people can be forced to buy health insurance and states can be forced to blow gigantic, federally-mandated holes in their budgets, this country will never recover. Our wannabe socialists in Congress and the White House are already, as Margaret Thatcher put it, "out of other people's money." The election in November may do much to blunt their odious ambitions, but they will never give up trying to turn America into a socialist nation. Judge Vinson is to be congratulated for seeing through their "Alice in Wonderland" manipulations. Here's hoping the Supreme Court deals an equally clarifying smackdown to our self-anointed "superiors" who believe Americans should be forced to engage in commerce against their will "for their own good."
Such thinking is enough to make one sick.
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© 2010, Arnold Ahlert |
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