Majority View SCOTUS As Fully Politicized

April, 11th, 2012

ABC/WaPo polling shows a majority don't believe SCOTUS will base their health care ruling on the law.

Big Time Republican Flip Flops

Sept 24th, 2011

Yesterday, Joshua Holland shined some light on nine issues about which the Republican party has gone through the looking glass altogether over the last few decades, most notably, the concept of a health care "mandate."

"Late last year, when a federal judge ruled against the mandate (two other courts disagreed, and the Supreme Court will end up deciding the question), Senator Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, rejoiced. "Today is a great day for liberty," he said. "Congress must obey the Constitution rather than make it up as we go along." It was an odd testament to freedom, given that Hatch himself co-sponsored a health-care reform bill built around an individual mandate in the late 1990s.

Journalist Steve Benen noted that while "the record here may be inconvenient for the right ... it's also unambiguous: the mandate Republicans currently hate was their idea."

It was championed by the Heritage Foundation ... Nixon embraced it in the 1970s, and George H.W. Bush kept it going in the 1980s. For years, it was touted by the likes of John McCain, Mitt Romney, Scott Brown, Chuck Grassley, Bob Bennett, Tommy Thompson, Lamar Alexander, Lindsey Graham, John Thune, Judd Gregg, and many other ... notable GOP officials.

According to NPR, the mandate was the Right's response to progressive proposals to establish a single-payer system. Mark Pauly, the conservative economist widely credited with the idea, explained that "a group of economists and health policy people, market-oriented, sat down and said, 'Let's see if we can come up with a health reform proposal that would preserve a role for markets but would also achieve universal coverage.'"

Yup. I am sure they were secret-communists all.

The Father Of The HCR "Mandate"

Feb 1st, 2011

Ezra Klein interviews Mark Pauly, life long Republican, who first conceived the HCR "mandate" in conjunction with the hyper-conservative Heritage Foundation at the request of the  G.H.W. Bush administration. 

It is largely this proposal that is written into the law today. How the heck anyone can describe backers of the provision as "socialist" continues to astound me. The money quotes:

"Was the constitutionality of the provision a question, either in your deliberations or after it was released?

I don’t remember that being raised at all. The way it was viewed by the Congressional Budget Office in 1994 was, effectively, as a tax. You either paid the tax and got insurance that way or went and got it another way. So I've been surprised at that argument. But I’m not an expert on the Constitution. My fix would be to simply say raise everyone’s taxes by what a health insurance policy would cost -- Congress definitely has the power to do that -- and then tell people that if they obtain insurance, they'll get a tax break of the same amount. So instead of a penalty, it’s a perfectly legal tax break. But this seems to me to angelic pinhead density arguments about whether it’s a payment to do something or not to do something."

The 212 Year Old Health Insurance Mandate

Dec 15th, 2010


by F. Grey Parker

In light of the debate following activist Judge Henry E. Hudson's wrongheaded and very dishonest ruling in the ongoing health care reform saga, there has been renewed hyperventilation over just what limits the federal government has and does not have to insist upon personal economic activity. Once again, I am am receiving blow-back over the alleged "overreach" of the "unprecedented" demands of the law.

It seems as good a time as any to revisit the actions of President John Adams.

From Salon:
"In July, 1798, Congress passed, and President John Adams signed into law “An Act for the Relief of Sick and Disabled Seamen,” authorizing the creation of a marine hospital service, and mandating privately employed sailors to purchase healthcare insurance.

This legislation also created America’s first payroll tax, as a ship’s owner was required to deduct 20 cents from each sailor’s monthly pay and forward those receipts to the service, which in turn provided injured sailors hospital care. Failure to pay or account properly was discouraged by requiring a law violating owner or ship's captain to pay a 100 dollar fine.

This historical fact demolishes claims of “unprecedented” and "The Constitution nowhere authorizes the United States to mandate, either directly or under threat of penalty...”

The debate continues...

I Read the Bill... And The Bill... And The Fix

March 26, 2010

by F. Grey Parker

Several weeks ago, I began my own personal endgame with Health Care Reform. For months it seemed, the growing mantra of the opposition had become the argument that nobody understood the legislation, just as it had been with 2009's stimulus package against which Rep. John Boehner (R-OH) had so famously boomed. We just didn't get it. It didn't matter whether we were discussing the House Bill, the Senate Bill or the Fix. The leadership of the opposition kept telling us that we were against it and if we weren't, well, then we just didn't understand it. These arguments didn't sit right with me from the beginning. There was something about that declaration, so insistently parochial, that was patently offensive to me.