healthcare

Dan Danner has an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal about why the National Federation of Independent Business is against the new healthcare law.  The reasons given by them are the same as many of my reasons to be against Obamacare.

The first that Mr. Danner touches on is the $8 billion tax on group and individual plans.  The issue here is that this was another way for the Obama/Pelosi/Reid regime to protect their favorite donors: unions.

Congressional candidate Kevin Calvey has filed a lawsuit against Obamacare and has already attracted over 2,000 plaintiffs.  This is different than the others that we have seen filed in that this is not a suit being filed by a group of attorneys general or the states themselves, but rather the People.

This lawsuit is filed on the grounds that Obamacare is a violation of the Commerce Clause; Article I Sections 2, 8, 9 and the Sixteenth Amendment; Tenth Amendment; Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment; Equal Protection of the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments; Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment; and Fourth Amendment.

This case makes some very good points, and most broad that I've seen.  It looks to be fairly thorough to me, but we'll have to see how it does in court.

In the case filed in the Southern District of Mississippi against the individual mandate, the plantiffs make a good case for how the individual mandate violates the privacy protections of individuals in the Constitution.  Most notable are paragraphs 70, 74, and 75.

70:

"...the compelled purchase of health insurance also constitutes the "taking" of private property under the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution.  Requiring Plantiffs to devote a penalty or a percent of their personal income for a purpose which they otherwise would not voluntarily choose based on individual circumstances is an arbitrary and capricious "taking" of property."

74:

You know, it's actually kind of funny.  The Republican Party has been constantly vilifying the individual mandate in the new universal healthcare law, yet they are the source of the idea.  

The idea first came up during the Nixon era as the alternative to the then-offered single-payer system by the Democrats.  It later resurfaced under George H. W. Bush.  The Bush Plan used "the tax system to 'encourage and empower' individuals to buy health insurance and would enact insurance market reforms that make it possible for everyone — even if they have pre-existing health problems — to get insurance." (see attached PDF, page 25)  That sounds remarkably similar to what was just signed into law...

It was also embraced by the Republican Party in Massachusetts quite recently.  Don't believe me?  Look up Romneycare.

Proving once again how much of a hypocrite he is, Mitt Romney lashed out in Chicago about Obamacare.  The problem I have with him being against Obamacare: it's just too similar to Romneycare in Massachusetts.

While he was Governor of Massachusetts, he pushed through and signed similar legislation.  In fact, both the Massachusetts and federal legislation are nearly identical.  The reason that he and Scott Brown are against HR 3590 is that it takes away the benefit that Massachusetts was getting: federal matching of an expanded Medicare program with dollars from other states.

He's also quite arrogant about his "brilliance", too:

"No one came to talk to me," Romney said.

Fidel Castro has offered a round of applause and endorsement of Obama's "important success."

"It is really incredible that 234 years after the Declaration of Independence ... the government of that country has approved medical attention for the majority of its citizens, something that Cuba was able to do half a century ago," Castro wrote [in an essay published in state media].

So does that mean he'll send us some cigars?

Over at the Huffington Post, Douglas Forbes put up a rather long post about abortion and the new healthcare law.  Unfortunately for him, he kinda showed his true colors as an uninformed activist by constantly referring to HR3200 which (according to him) recently passed 219-212.  Of course, he probably meant HR3590, but he did make a few references to topics that are unique to HR3200.

What's even more astounding is that 2/3 of his "article" bashes Sarah Palin.  Another 1/6 only talks about the recently exposed Catholic priest-turned-child-molester.  Very little discussion takes place on the (supposedly intended) topic of state-funded abortion in the healthcare bill.

Thirteen states have jointly filed a lawsuit against the constitutionality of the individual mandate, and Virginia has filed theirs alone.  I've attached to this post a copy of the suit filed by the States of Florida, South Carolina, Nebraska, Texas, Michigan, Utah, Pennsylvania, Alabama, South Dakota, Louisiana, Idaho, Washington and Colorado.

Much to the dismay of liberals across the country, the markets have spoken in support of HR 3590's passage.  I find it quite ironic that throughout this whole process the left has been screaming that the people are either on the side of healthcare reform or the insurance companies.  I mean, if you were even PAYING ATTENTION at all, the majority of the villianized insurance and medical lobbies were FOR the bill.

But even before the president spoke, the Pharmaceutical Researchers and Manufacturers of America -- whose $26.1 million lobbying effort in 2009 was the most expensive by any industry lobby in history -- hailed the health package as "important and historic."

It wasn’t a bad dream. HR 3590 passed and has been signed into law.

You may have already noticed that more than two-thirds of States are either working on legislation or filing lawsuits to nullify it or prove the individual mandate unconstitutional. The lawsuits center around whether or not Congress has the authority under Article I Section 8 to compel individuals to purchase insurance from the private sector or face penalties.