U.S. President Barack Obama publicly challenged the Supreme Court Justices on Monday, reminding them that they are not elected officials. This action comes in light of what could be a declaration by the Supreme Court of the United States, that Obamacare is indeed unconstitutional. Last week, during the hearing sessions, defenders of the government controlled health care program were continuously grilled by conservative and liberal Justices, who defied Obama administration spokespeople to explain why should the government have the power to obligate individuals to buy a product they did not want or did not need.
On Monday, Obama said the Justices had to be very careful with their decision, and that if they declared the law unconstitutional, such decision would impact the government’s capacity to provide healthcare to a portion of the population. “The president challenged the “unelected” Supreme Court not to take the “extraordinary” and “unprecedented” step of overturning his landmark health reform law,” reports the news agency AFP. Will the “unelected” adjective be Barack Obama’s next move to save his healthcare bill which for now seems to have strong opposition among the Supreme Court Justices? Will he claim that due to the unelected nature of the Justices’ position their decision can be overturned by the president? This is not a far fetched scenario for a man who has said that he does not need Congress’ approval to send US troops to war because he has a mandate from the United Nations to carry out military strikes anywhere in the world.
“Ultimately, I am confident that the Supreme Court will not take what would be an unprecedented, extraordinary step of overturning a law that was passed by a strong majority of a democratically elected Congress,” said Obama. The U.S. president added that even Republicans rejected Supreme Court decisions that according to them were made based on activism as supposed to on objective interpretation of the laws. Obama intends to shield his healthcare law against a Court decision that may have a tight vote. Instead of focusing on whether there is a constitutional power for the president or the central federal government to mandate that citizens buy insurance, or broccoli, for that matter, Obama is trying to distract the public with his assertion that if Obamacare is thrown out, such a decision might be invalid because the Supreme Court Justices are not directly appointed by the people of the United States.Mr. Obama forgets that it is the president who decides who to recommend for a seat at the Supreme Court and that all presidents have done so in the past.
“I am pretty confident that this court will recognize its duty and not take that step,” Obama said while speaking in the Rose Garden.Mr. Obama’s comments outside the White House are seen as a warning to the Supreme Court, one of the three branches of government that Barack Obama has forcefully tried to turn into one during his first term in the highest office. Besides the fact that the Justices are not directly elected by the people, Obama also argued that there is a “human element” to his law and that this is one of the strongest reasons for the Justices to vote Yes on Obamacare. In the past, Obama has questioned and dismissed Congress’ powers and independence to carry out the people’s business and has said that he will make decisions unilaterally should Congress refuse to pass any legislation that he deems necessary. This is a surprising statement if it is taken into account that this Congress has approved laws such as the National Defense Authorization Act, that allows the president to kidnap, torture and kill any individual, American or otherwise, within the United States territory or elsewhere, if he or she is considered a suspect of aiding terrorists groups.
Many Republicans and independents who oppose Obamacare argue that the passage of this law provides the government with powers that go beyond the real conceded by the U.S. Constitution. Forcing individuals to buy a product, in this case healthcare, is an unprecedented action; perhaps even more than the Supreme Court ruling Obamacare unconstitutional or even what Obama called “judicial activism”. “It’s not that common for presidents to get into direct verbal confrontations with the Supreme Court,” said Georgetown University law professor Louis Michael Seidman to Reuters. “But it’s also not that common for the Supreme Court to threaten to override one of the president’s central legislative accomplishments.” In the meantime, Republican presidential candidate, Mitt Romney said through his spokesperson Andrea Saul, that “What was ‘unprecedented’ was the partisan process President Obama used to shove this unconstitutional bill through.” Ms. Saul added that Mitt Romney plans to repeal Obamacare if he is elected the next president of the United States.
The most challenged aspect of Obamacare is the individual mandate, which obligates people to buy healthcare from the Federal government, even if they don’t want it or don’t need it. A decision by the Supreme Court to uphold Obamacare but to throw out the individual mandate, wouldn’t be good news for Obama either. It is through the mandatory payment made by all citizens that the government will collect money to pay for the socialist leaning healthcare package. “I think the justices should understand that in the absence of an individual mandate, you cannot have a mechanism to ensure that people with preexisting conditions can actually get health care,” Obama said. What Obama meant is that without forcing people to pay their share, Obamacare would not have the necessary funding to give free healthcare to everyone Obama promised to give it to during his political campaign. Of course, Obamacare has nothing to do with bringing healthcare to more people. It has everything to do with having an all mighty government that tells people what they can and can’t do, or what they must and mustn’t do. It is not necessary to force anyone to buy healthcare from the government in order to allow people with pre-existing conditions, for example to have care, as Obama wants everyone to believe. All he has to do is send a law to Congress that mandates that insurance corporations allow coverage for those people with pre-existing conditions. But is not going to happen, because it was precisely the insurance industry the one that wrote Obamacare.
As many critics of Obamacare have mentioned, this is another tool for wealth redistribution born inside an administration that believes that the government is responsible for taking care of everyone and everything and that has been aided by the insurance industry to give more power to themselves.
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As the Supreme Court of the United States reviews the legality of the so called Obamacare socialist healthcare legislation, the first accounts of the justices opinions about it seem to be negative to say the least. Meanwhile, Obama supporters like James Carville are trying to win the battle already for the Democrat side. Carville has said that a loss in the Supreme Court will help democrats.
CNN’s Jeffrey Toobin said that Obamacare is a train wreck and that expectations are low for the legislation to survive the justices’ review. As the hours go by, some opinions from their analysis have been leaked into the media, with Justice Kennedy saying that Obamacare fundamentally changes the relationship between the people and their government. Justice John Roberts has compared the mandate too make anyone and everyone buy government sponsored healthcare to having that same government mandating that people buy a cellphone. “Can government make you buy a cell phone?” asked Roberts. Meanwhile, Justice Anthony Scalia questioned the individual mandate by asking pro Obamacare folks why was the definition of “market” so broadly represented in the text of the legislation. “Could you define the market — everybody has to buy food sooner or later, so you define the market as food, therefore, everybody is in the market; therefore, you can make people buy broccoli,” Scalia said. Does government make people buy broccoli?
Given this scenario, you would think that defenders of Obamacare would be absolutely sharp when speaking in favor of the legislation. But it wasn’t the case for Solicitor General Donald Verrilli, who stumbled when trying to make the case for a legalized socialist healthcare system. Mr. Verrilli continuously coughed and stuttered while trying to speak about the wonders of Obamacare and justifying the government controlled healthcare scheme. But is this a doomsday sentence for Obamacare? It is also being reported that even Justice Sotomayor has expressed some doubts about some aspects of Obamacare. According to Reuters “the four liberal justices, Stephen Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, all indicated that they believed the mandate valid under the U.S. Constitution. Two conservatives, Antonin Scalia and Samuel Alito, were vocal in their skepticism about the requirement.”
I’ve seen rabbits being pulled out of hats before, so I would not hold my breath for a decision against Obamacare just yet. “Obamacare is in big trouble,” says Jeffrey Toobin, who has been in attendance during the review process. But just as Carville manage to paint a defeat as a victory, the main stream liberal media has orchestrated a campaign to prepare their audience for a possible loss, while at the same time lowering expectations in the minds of the rest of the public in order to take some pressure off a potential decision that upholds Obamacare as it stands. It is the typical “playing possum game”. They’ve done it before with the so-called kinetic action in Libya, the war in Iraq and a possible attack against Iran and Syria.
What are the chances that Obamacare will not pass, that it could be upheld? According to Mr. Toobin, there are 5 very solid votes to throw out this healthcare legislation out the window. But the idea that people should participate in this socialized way of delivering healthcare also has four very strong votes that support it in the four liberal Supreme Court justices. Mr. Toobin says the fifth vote, a conservative one, could decide whether or not Americans are indeed obligated — even if such obligation is unconstitutional — to purchase government healthcare. That vote comes from Justice John Roberts, who although has expressed reservations about Obamacare, has not shown a clear cut opinion about the constitutionality or unconstitutionality of the law. “I think it just looks bad for this law,” says Toobin.
A popular talking point that has been circulating is that those who do not enter the government mandated healthcare system will make it that much more difficult for those who do pay for the services provided under such a system. This is a way to sort of hijack public opinion and to misguided the public to support and accept Obamacare because it is good for the ‘commonwealth’. It is the typical collectivist view that people must do what is better for the mass, as supposed to taking care of themselves first, to then help others. Those who do not support Obamacare, as we have seen since the law was brought up and discussed in mainstream American, will be ostracized and called names for not complying.
If the Supreme Court upholds Obamacare as it is now, it would establish a dangerous precedent that the government can tell anyone to buy any product as supposed to people being able to choose whatever they think it’s better for them. Here is where the government telling people to buy broccoli comes in handy. What will be next? Government telling people what car to buy? What airline to fly or what supermarkets to go to purchase groceries? How about how much electricity, gas or water people should use? As explained by Mr. Toobin, who acts as a legal expert for CNN, Obamacare forces people to buy a product they may not want or that they may not need. The same is true for tax collection, for example. Although the Constitution is very clear about the ways in which government must operate, people are obligated to pay income tax. If Obamacare is thrown out due to its unconstitutional nature, couldn’t citizens also make a case for not paying income tax because of the unconstitutional way in which government forces people to pay it? How about challenges against the constitutional amendment and the way it was passed to allow the government to tax people’s income?
What happens if the individual mandate is deemed unconstitutional, but the rest of the law is not? Because Obamacare is directly dependent on the government’s ability to force citizens to buy insurance in order to finance Obamacare, it is hard to see how the rest of the program would be able to stand on its own feet. Government would have to kill Obamacare as a whole, restructure it in order to make it available without the monies collected from individuals who decide not to join the program, or raise taxes in order to finance it. It is now well-known that the actual cost of Obamacare goes way beyond the total provided by the Federal Government and that it would take more than a national consensus for everyone to join in order to keep it alive for as long as the government wants.
According to recent polls, at least 30 percent of the interviewed Americans do support a decision to declare Obamacare unconstitutional. As the system stands now, the healthcare system is 20,000 doctors short to help the number of patients who use Medicare and Medicaid. What will happen if Obamacare is upheld and many more millions of people decide to make an appointment to see their doctor? What good does it make to have free healthcare if there isn’t a doctor to visit?
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The ruling breaks apart the obligation of individuals to carry health insurance, the section known as individual mandate.
WSJ
A federal judge ruled Monday that a central plank of the health law violates the Constitution, dealing the biggest setback yet to the Obama administration’s signature legislative accomplishment.
In a 42-page ruling, U.S. District Judge Henry E. Hudson said the law’s requirement that most Americans carry insurance or pay a penalty “exceeds the constitutional boundaries of congressional power.”
The lawsuit, brought by Virginia’s attorney general, Republican Ken Cuccinelli, is the first court ruling against the law since President Barack Obama signed it in March. More than 20 federal lawsuits have been filed against the overhaul, and judges in two of those cases ruled in favor of the Obama administration.
While Monday’s decision creates a headache for the law’s supporters, it doesn’t mean that states or the federal government must stop implementing the law.
Judge Hudson didn’t grant the plaintiffs’ request for an immediate nationwide injunction against the entire law or against the requirement that most Americans carry insurance. That requirement begins in 2014.
The judge also said that his ruling only strikes down the requirement to carry insurance, known as the individual mandate, and the provisions of the law that are directly dependent on it.
The Supreme Court is ultimately expected to settle the issue after the Virginia case and other similar ones wind their way though the courts.
Obama administration officials say the ruling amounts to an attack on one of the law’s most popular provisions—the ban on insurers denying coverage to people with pre-existing health conditions. They say that piece of the law cannot work unless coupled with a requirement that nearly all Americans carry insurance.
The administration has played down the outcome of this particular case, characterizing it as having received outsize importance because of Mr. Cuccinelli’s visibility.
“We are confident that this law is constitutional, and we are confident that the Supreme Court when, and if, it hears this case will agree that it’s constitutional,” an administration official said.
For opponents of the law, Monday’s ruling is the first victory in a multifaceted attack designed to help Republicans take back the White House in 2012. Republicans see the court battle as one way to show their opposition to voters who have shown skepticism toward the law.
The health overhaul is designed to expand insurance to 32 million Americans by giving lower earners tax credits to help them buy insurance and widening eligibility for the Medicaid federal-state insurance program for the poor. Without the requirement to carry insurance, the Obama administration predicts, the law would leave an additional 16 million Americans uninsured.
Judge Hudson, of the Eastern District of Virginia, said the individual mandate “would invite unbridled exercise of federal police powers.”
He added: “At its core, this dispute is not simply about regulating the business of insurance—or crafting a scheme of universal health insurance coverage—it’s about an individual’s right to choose to participate.”
Separately, federal Judge Roger Vinson in Pensacola, Fla., will hear arguments Thursday in a challenge brought by officials in 20 states, and he could offer the clearest indication yet of how he will rule.
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