...the saddest are these, it might have been:
"With the Supreme Court arguing the legality of the Affordable Care Act, it is a good time to remember that almost nobody disputes that single payer, such as Medicare for All, would be undoubtedly constitutional. Even Michael Carvin, one of the lead lawyers arguing (for the non-state private opponents) that the individual mandate is unconstitutional admitted today that single payer would be clearly legal. From the Supreme Court transcript:
JUSTICE SOTOMAYOR: So the -- I -- I want to understand the choices you're saying Congress has. Congress can tax everybody and set up a public health care system.
MR. CARVIN: Yes.
JUSTICE SOTOMAYOR: That would be okay?
MR. CARVIN: Yes. Tax power is -
JUSTICE SOTOMAYOR: Okay.
MR. CARVIN: I would accept that.
If Democrats had created a simple, straight forward single payer system or merely provided the uninsured with a default public insurance program, the constitutionality of health care reform would likely never have gotten to the Supreme Court."
Would it have been any more divisive and politically costly if instead of over a thousand pages of a confusing, convoluted, constitutionally questionable, contraption that didn't take effect for 4 years---which is the Affordable Care Act---to have proposed and fought for something simple, popular with the American people, and that could have been implemented quickly and without a significant addition to the bureaucracy? I don't see how.
@offshore, that's how cruel life is.
I think its not really a good reason to die just because of being poor or lack of money to pay. I hope there's more mercy...
Gabbie
My blog: sac bandoulière en cuir
Again, it is a specious argument. As Paul Krugman explained in his column: "There are at least two ways to address this reality — which is, by the way, very much an issue involving interstate commerce, and hence a valid federal concern. One is to tax everyone — healthy and sick alike — and use the money raised to provide health coverage. That’s what Medicare and Medicaid do. The other is to require that everyone buy insurance, while aiding those for whom this is a financial hardship.
Are these fundamentally different approaches? Is requiring that people pay a tax that finances health coverage O.K., while requiring that they purchase insurance is unconstitutional? It’s hard to see why — and it’s not just those of us without legal training who find the distinction strange. Here’s what Charles Fried — who was Ronald Reagan’s solicitor general — said in a recent interview with The Washington Post: “I’ve never understood why regulating by making people go buy something is somehow more intrusive than regulating by making them pay taxes and then giving it to them.”
The arguments are highly political and NOT LEGAL arguments. NONE of the *ideologues* questions were about LAW only about POLICY. They seem to be already of the mindset they will deliver their decision in the same manner as the election of 2000 - NOT based in ANY manner of LAW, but only in the most partisan and political acts of thuggery.
So sad. And sad to hear the chanting of those who would just as soon let people die on the steps of hospitals. Every now and then, something happens that really shakes my faith in humanity.