(CNN) — Officials from 14 states have gone to court to block the historic overhaul of the U.S. health care system that President Obama signed into law Tuesday, arguing the law’s requirement that individuals buy health insurance violates the Constitution.
Thirteen of those officials filed suit in a federal court in Pensacola, Florida, minutes after Obama signed the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. The complaint calls the act an “unprecedented encroachment on the sovereignty of the states” and asks a judge to block its enforcement.
“The Constitution nowhere authorizes the United States to mandate, either directly or under threat of penalty, that all citizens and legal residents have qualifying health care coverage,” the lawsuit states.
Morgana,
I am sorry you have to deal with that every day. The thing that is most difficult for me to wrap my brain around would be how people can be so ignorant as to work for something that is in direct detriment to their well being; all the while choosing to remain ignorant.
The late Robert A. Wilson wrote that Timothy Leary believed that intelligence is growing exponentially and Wilson seemed to concur. I think the last three decades have seen just the opposite; ignorance has grown exponentially because people just don’t want to have to think and therefore they choose the path of least resistance which is ignorance. My late brother, the thinker, used to call people lemmings because they followed instead of thinking for themselves.
The question is, now that the thinking people have awakened and begun to make changes, how can we get the ignorant-by-choice folks to not only embrace our more caring and compassionate agenda but actually want to work with us? How can we overcome their fears and greed and turn them? For we must turn them or they will be the disaffected minority that works to undermine us at every turn.
Divided we fail; the businesses that run this country know that and get people to feed into that by polarizing us over superficial issues. Somehow we need to show that we are more alike than different so we are less divided. We need to find a common enemy (so to speak) to rally the ignorant-by-choice to a more compassionate way of thinking. In my book, that means using their “language” to help them see. Yet their language is fear and greed; to use those means treating them as badly as the businesses that run this country have.
There must be another way but I have not had enough coffee to figure it out.
If the healthcare we just got is unconstitutional, do these folks really want to open that can of worms? Suppose the courts rule that this new healthcare law IS unconstitutional; would we also then lose social security, SSI, and medicare?
Yes, Carrie – those folks DO want to open that can of worms. I live in Jim DeMint’s Senate district. I spend every day at work among folks who, for instance, have pictures of Obama with bullseyes on the forehead posted to their cubicle walls. [sigh]
Carrie
Fe told me last night that Naom Chomsky, a mind I like to listen to, believes that a mandatory buy-in is an important step toward single payer universal health care.
I won’t say I’m happy to pay my car insurance, but I am happy that all those people who text while driving have to have insurance.
ef
Having been on the receiving end of the limited kind of state sponsored disaster based insurance offered to the self-employed, the “less fortunate” etc.
It seems to me the bottom line is this:
When states and governments go broke, the benefits available to the poor, the elderly diminish accordingly whether insured or not.
There went my 91 year old mom’s physical therapy, so I buy exercise stuff
You break a tooth, they pull the tooth. Repair is not an option. But you do get a big fat prescription for Vicodin and whole bunch of other pills you don’t need.
You are immediately instructed by your “primary care” guy to go get every flipping test known to mankind, whether or not it has anything to do with your health problem simply because you are covered by insurance
and then when you’re sufficiently addicted to the pills, terrorized by the tests, etc.
You discover you’ve spent your limit, and they cut you off.
The point being that health care coverage, by its definition is essentially designed to support big pharma, and the ever increasing very expensive and ocassionally dubious developments in medical technology.
Providers get chump change, the major recipients remain technology and big business.
Benefits, my eye….
Thus this bill is NOT about “care” it is about business. It is about a system dedicated only to perpetuating itself by making money.
And as the government is currently being run according to the dictates of corporate law.
Coverage therefore will always be kinder to those young and relatively healthy workers able to contribute to the economy through their insurance plans, jobs and enterprise. If you keep them healthy, they keep the wheels turning.
While anyone who places too great a financial burden on the system will die and indeed the powers that be prefer it that way.
Yet the plan itself does very little to address the fact that the corporate systems in place are already too cumbersome to be efficient even at making money and in corporate fashion are reaching out to already overburdened consumers by dipping into the pockets of small business owners, the self-employed and others in order to make coverage “mandatory” Thereby creating more dollars to sustain the system and taking the financial burden off the state and federal government.
After the state insurance cut a friend of mine, who basically lost her mind fer a little bit about two years ago, she was assured the state was paying the bills, ony to find when they cut her off, she was confronted with a 75,000 dollar hospital bill for her incidentally court ordered stay, They were threatening to take her house, her kid, and her disability checks, too.
But being a former lawyer for the Justice department
and more or less recovered from her craziness, she went to the table and offered ’em a deal.
She wouldn’t pay a nickel more than the insurance companies would have paid.
The final tally?
One fucking FIFTH of the calculated bill.
I rest my case.
Here is a 23 minute interview with Germaine Greer that popped up last night.
Germaine Greer wrote The Femail Eunuch in 1969…..
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00rqq4c/HARDtalk_Professor_Germaine_Greer_Writer_and_Academic/
PH
Heard a rather chilling story about why this Bill had to be signed right before noon yesterday. It has to do with the Georgia Guide Stone theory….the Stones were dedicated March 22 1980…there is a curious aperture in one of the stones, relating to where the sun shines through… exactly at noon.
After doing a bit of research, I found there is also mention of a mysterious ` 30 Year Plan ` in the mission statement of the people who planned and financed the Stones.
The Health Care bill was signed within 24 hours of this `30 year` span March 22 1980- March 23, 2010….exactly before noon.
Curious timing.
Hazel, thanks ever so much for your wonderful thoughts.
I forgot to mention one last tiny bit of information to add to this scenario. When my husband passed away and financially I was in ruin. I went to the state of Florida’s social security office. I tried to receive my husband’s 30 plus years of forced withdrawls from his paycheck, each and every week his payments towards social security. I was told that I was only 46 years old, not 62 years old, I was in perfect health therefore not eligible for S.S.I and I was working. Disqualified. Also I had no minor children that was living in my house that I had to take care of. Disqualified again. Went to U.A.W. Union to try to collect that weekly deductible that they took from my husbands paycheck each week towards his pension. Upon his death the insurance company that held the policy of the
U.A.W. Pension account said my husband died at age 52 did not make it to retirement age of 62. Disqualified again. Now I have since remarried, not ever allowed to receive any portion of my husbands social security. Who keeps that the State of Florida for somebody else who never paid into the system (didn’t work). Now who gets to keep his pension from the U.A.W. The insurnce company.
Marilyn – I’ve just read your account, twice. I am horrified for you – words fail. Except to say, that it should never, ever have happened. It is just so unbelievably wrong. I am sending you warmest wishes. Hazel.
First let me say that I prayed dearly for this day to come, only it arrived 14 years to late. When Bill & Hillary Clinton, tried to pass legislation or medical reform, it was doomed from their start of enacting it into law, I prayed extensively then, only to realize that it wasn’t going to come about.
Briefly my husband was a cigarette smoker, needed emergency surgery as his lung colasped having black lung disease. He wasn’t working at the time so we had no medical insurance. Him being a Vietnam Veteran, thought his medical would be covered. But several years earlier, to cut costs, Ronald Reagan determined that if it wasn’t “service related” any medical occurence would not be paid for unless upon leaving the military you wrote down and signed it this or that was physically wrong with you and the Veterans hospital would cover you but only for that illness you stated at the time of departure from the military. Long story short, he was hospitalized for two weeks and we received a bill of $49,000.00,and he was unemployed at the time. Immediately he was not able to look for a job as he now needed upwards of three months recovery time, so unemployment was now canceled. The state of Florida, where they just filed this law suit, stopping this health care plan, didn’t feel as though they should help out with either a reduced medical bill or some kind of subsidary to help out on the missing income. Their rebutal was, that I worked so therefore pay the bill and go about your merry way. 20 people from the hospital all wanted a monthly payment from me, they couldn’t all just come together so that I could make one payment a month, no anybody that was involved with the care of my husband, all required payment. My paycheck didn’t even cover the full payment of our morgage, but the state of Florida figured that was ok. My husband recovered from this illness but now had a pre – existing problem so now he couldn’t get insurance again. Finally he became employed again, and we started making back payments to the hospital. My husband developed Hepatitis B from tainted blood while in the hospital for his surgery, ( could never prove this) he then passed away as he couldn’t be looked at medically until he was rushed to the hospital in which case they then had to take him in. Where he died one week later while in the hospital, and to think he was a veteran. Again long story, had to file bankrupcy to wipe the slate clean of his medical debt that was now way passed due and my morgage that fell behind also. I did manage to pick up a part time job along with my full time job, but the past dues where out to get me. They just kept piling on more costs along with more interest. You know the story. In order for myself not to kill myself from being overworked, I finallly during my bankrupcy hearing let my house go into foreclosure. That was 14 years ago. When this health plan came up for vote, I prayed so hard that it would pass. Now I find out that it is the state of Florida again putting an extra spoke in the wheel. This just doesn’t set to well with me right about now.
http://www.examiner.com/x-34823-Allegheny-County-Elections-2010-Examiner~y2010m3d23-Copy-of-state-attorney-generals-complaint-against-just-signed-federal-health-care-reform
There is a link to the PDF of the 27 page complaint at the above link Eric. Isn’t this just so much drama? I get furious every time I hear one of those Republicans say “the American people don’t want this”.
Heard a reporter on NPR say the states’ suit was filed exactly seven minutes after Obama signed the bill. If the bill was signed at 11:55am, seven minutes later would be 12:02pm. We’re living in interesting times.
Eric:
Obama signed it at 11:55am today.
I would argue that there is precedent for the government forcing people to buy insurance. That precedent includes Social Security, SSI, and Medicare which are old age insurance, disability insurance and old age health insurance that EVERYONE is forced to pay into. If the healthcare we just got is unconstitutional, do these folks really want to open that can of worms? Suppose the courts rule that this new healthcare law IS unconstitutional; would we also then lose social security, SSI, and medicare?
The only difference is, these programs are government run and the new healthcare law is using private insurance companies. Could these court filings be just the impetus congress needs to make a public option amendment to the new law in order to keep the reform within constitutional law? Forcing people to pay into a government run health insurance plan would work because of Social Security, SSI and Medicare.
It will be interesting to see how this pans out.
Well, I guess we could have seen this coming. I do think there’s a wee little constitutional issue of requiring health insurance and not providing so much as a public option. It will be interesting to see how this develops.
If anyone stumbles across a copy of the complaint I would love to read it. I’m also stumbling around looking for the exact time of the law being signed by O’Bamma. We were floating around a Moon-Pluto opposition this morning.