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Getbig Main Boards => Politics and Political Issues Board => Topic started by: Jezebelle on April 07, 2010, 06:30:53 AM
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http://www.allvoices.com/contributed-news/5465781-individual-mandate-to-purchase-health-insurance
If you recall, one of the main things the Republican Party wanted in the bill was the ability to purchase health insurance from across state lines. That’s in the bill too.What that does is make the health insurance market an inter-state market. Congress has the right to regulate interstate commerce.But here’s another way to see the individual mandate, the individual mandate is structured as a tax:The House bill is a tax on adjusted gross income. You pay the tax if you don't purchase health insurance. Put another way, if you don't want to buy health insurance you can just pay the tax.
The Senate bill is a penalty tax. If you don't want to purchase health insurance, you pay the tax. The penalty is assessed for as long as you don't buy insurance. Such taxes are quite common-- think, for example, about the penalties imposed for failing to pay your income tax on time, or a tax on polluters who fail to purchase and install anti-pollution equipment. The Senate bill can also be classified as an excise tax on an event-- failure to pay premiums in a given month.
Congress's powers to impose an income tax, a penalty tax, or an excise tax are unproblematic. The House and Senate versions of the individual mandate are clearly within Congress's powers to tax and spend for the general welfare. Nor are they direct taxes that must be apportioned by state. Under the 16th Amendment taxes on income need not be apportioned no matter what the source of the income; excise and penalty taxes are not taxes on real estate and they are not capitation or "head" taxes, taxes that are levied on the population no matter what they do. Therefore they are not direct taxes within the meaning of the Constitution and existing precedents.
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The bill is a piece of shit. Thank the Democrats for starting out with a compromise and thank them for passing it. And thank the Republicans for the crappy ideas they put in.
Clean House time.
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The bill is a piece of shit. Thank the Democrats for starting out with a compromise and thank them for passing it. And thank the Republicans for the crappy ideas they put in.
Clean House time.
Hell has frozen over! I agree with you.
What I keep asking and have a problem with and what people won't answer...is not that we need healthcare, but I have a huge issue with the IRS imposing fines which puts all of this into the commerce clause. Not cool in my book, this is just asking for trouble.
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I read your first post but a bit confused...from my reading/listening I was not aware of anything that granted people the right to purchase insurance out of their home state. Are you saying the bill has language that allows competition across state lines? I didn't think that was the case.
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http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ezra-klein/2010/02/five_compronises_in_health_car.html
The six Republican ideas already in the health-care reform bill
At this point, I don't think it's well understood how many of the GOP's central health-care policy ideas have already been included as compromises in the health-care bill. But one good way is to look at the GOP's "Solutions for America" homepage, which lays out its health-care plan in some detail. It has four planks. All of them -- yes, you read that right -- are in the Senate health-care bill.
(1) "Let families and businesses buy health insurance across state lines." This is a long-running debate between liberals and conservatives. Currently, states regulate insurers. Liberals feel that's too weak and allows for too much variation, and they want federal regulation of insurers. Conservatives feel that states over-regulate insurers, and they want insurers to be able to cluster in the state with the least regulation and offer policies nationwide, much as credit card companies do today.
To the surprise and dismay of many liberals, the Senate health-care bill included a compromise with the conservative vision for insurance regulation. The relevant policy is in Section 1333, which allows the formation of interstate compacts. Under this provision, Wyoming, Colorado, Arizona, Utah, and Idaho (for instance) could agree to allow insurers based in any of those states to sell plans in all of them. This prevents a race to the bottom, as Idaho has to be comfortable with Arizona's regulations, and the policies have to have a minimum level of benefits (something that even Rep. Paul Ryan believes), but it's a lot closer to the conservative ideal.
(2) "Allow individuals, small businesses, and trade associations to pool together and acquire health insurance at lower prices, the same way large corporations and labor unions do." This is the very purpose of the exchanges, as defined in Section 1312. Insurers are required to pool the risk of all the small businesses and individuals in the new markets rather than treating them as small, single units. That gives the newly pooled consumers bargaining power akin to that of a massive corporation or labor union, just as conservatives want. It also gives insurers reason to compete aggressively for their business, which is key to the conservative vision. Finally, empowering the exchanges to use prudential purchasing maximizes the power and leverage that consumers will now enjoy.
(3) "Give states the tools to create their own innovative reforms that lower health care costs." Section 1302 of the Senate bill does this directly. The provision is entitled "the Waiver for State Innovation," and it gives states the power to junk the whole of the health-care plan -- that means the individual mandate, the Medicaid expansion, all of it -- if they can do it better and cheaper.
(4) "End junk lawsuits." It's not entirely clear what this means, as most malpractice lawsuits actually aren't junk lawsuits. The evidence on this is pretty clear: The malpractice problem is on operating tables, not in court rooms. Which isn't to deny that our current system is broken for patients and doctors alike. The Senate bill proposes to deal with this in Section 6801, which encourages states to develop new malpractice systems and suggests that Congress fund the most promising experiments. This compromise makes a lot of sense given the GOP's already-expressed preference for letting states "create their own innovative reforms that lower health care costs," but since what the Republicans actually want is a national system capping damages, I can see how this compromise wouldn't be to their liking.
(5) To stop there, however, does the conservative vision a disservice. The solutions the GOP has on its Web site are not solutions at all, because Republicans don't want to be in the position of offering an alternative bill. But when Republicans are feeling bolder -- as they were in Bush's 2007 State of the Union, or John McCain's plan -- they generally take aim at one of the worst distortions in the health-care market: The tax break for employer-sponsored insurance. Bush capped it. McCain repealed it altogether. Democrats usually reject, and attack, both approaches.
Not this year, though. Senate Democrats initially attempted to cap the exclusion, which is what Bush proposed in 2007. There was no Republican support for the move, and Democrats backed off from the proposal. They quickly replaced it, however, with the excise tax, which does virtually the same thing. The excise tax only applies to employer-sponsored insurance above a certain price point, and it essentially erases the preferential tax treatment for every dollar above its threshold.
(6) And finally, we shouldn't forget the compromises that have been the most painful for Democrats, and the most substantive. This is a private-market plan. Not only is single-payer off the table, but at this point, so too is the public option. The thing that liberals want most in the world has been compromised away.
On Sunday, John Boehner and Mitch McConnell responded to Barack Obama's summit invitation by demanding Obama scrap the health-care reform bill entirely. This is the context for that demand. What they want isn't a bill that incorporates their ideas. They've already got that. What they want is no bill at all. And that's a hard position for the White House to compromise with.
Photo credit: AP Photo/Harry Hamburg.
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::) ::)
Again the fool is lying through his teeth. The Fed govt is govt is going to require minimum standards on all future policies such that it wont matter where you buy the insurance since the costs will all have a floor level of mandates etc.
This is a perfect example of howe this pofs lies and manipulates situations to fool people.
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The govt does have the right to regulate interstate commerce...it does not have the right to say you must do business with an industry which is what the mandate in effect does...
again you use the "general welfare" bs which is so broad and vague it could be used for anything ::)
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The govt does have the right to regulate interstate commerce...it does not have the right to say you must do business with an industry which is what the mandate in effect does...
again you use the "general welfare" bs which is so broad and vague it could be used for anything ::)
I wish they could figure a mandate into this whole scheme of my right to get BJ's from Eva Mendes and a whole host of other hotties.
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Thank you Jezebelle (although that article has some liberal slant)...still not pure interstate competition and they are mandating the kind of insurance you can buy. The point is to increase competition in a marketplace with reasonable floor regulations. I don't see this satisfying that objective.
Though I completely see the argument against it, I am actually ok with mandating insurance as long as the people can choose what best suits them with limited regulation. For instance, I am ok with the government saying that everyone has to buy insurance which ranges from full coverage to a $5,000 deductible/catastrophic plan. I think people should be able to choose among a range of plans that best suits their needs. Many people that are among the uninsured are people 18-35 that choose not to have health insurance.
Seems much of what they do sounds good on the surface but comes with footnotes that few are reading.
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Thank you Jezebelle...still not pure interstate competition and they are mandating the kind of insurance you can buy. The point is to increase competition in a marketplace with reasonable floor regulations. I don't see this satisfying that objective.
Though I completely see the argument against it, I am actually ok with mandating insurance as long as the people can choose what best suits them with limited regulation. For instance, I am ok with the government saying that everyone has to buy insurance which ranges from full coverage to a $5,000 deductible/catastrophic plan. I think people should be able to choose among a range of plans that best suits their needs. Many people that are among the uninsured are people 18-35 that choose not to have health insurance.
Seems everything they do sounds good on the surface but comes with footnotes that few are reading.
I disagree.
I can`t see any reason why a mandate of any kind is a good idea. Nobody should be forced into buying into something they don`t want or that they do not wish to support. I DO NOT wish to support the Private Insurance Industry so why should I have to or why should I have to be fined if I don`t?