They’re just “challenging everything you know”, and essentially proving you, meaning those who understand Obamacare, rather than simply being cheerleaders for a bill you didn’t read, 100% correct
(WP) 1. The “individual mandate†forces everyone to buy health insurance.
The law states that, beginning in 2014, individuals must ensure that they and their dependents are covered by health insurance. Taxpayers who do not meet this requirement will have to pay a penalty that the law calls a “shared responsibility payment.†It begins at $95 for the first year and never exceeds 21 / 2 percent of anyone’s annual taxable income.
A large majority of Americans, of course, have health insurance through their employers, Medicare or Medicaid and are already in compliance with this requirement. Given the relatively modest payment required of those who choose not to maintain insurance, no one is being forced to buy a product they don’t want.
The challengers argue that the mandate is a binding requirement that makes anyone who goes without insurance a lawbreaker. The government has determined, however, that those who pay the penalty, like those who are exempt from the penalty, are not lawbreakers. As a practical matter, the so-called mandate is just a relatively modest financial incentive to have health insurance.
So, essentially, you either must purchase health insurance or face a fine/tax. Just like we have argued. The “myth” is positioned as “you must purchase it.” Period. Alas, that was never the argument, so, myth #1 shot down.
2. Only the individual mandate is at stake in the Supreme Court case.
The mandate is not a stand-alone provision that can be invalidated without affecting the rest of the law. In fact, it is merely an ancillary measure that makes two more-fundamental provisions of the law workable: “guaranteed issue†and “community rating.â€
Not sure how that is a myth. Conservatives want the entire thing shot down.
3. If the court upholds the health-care law, it means Congress has the power to require Americans to purchase any product.
The mandate does not force people into commerce who would otherwise remain outside it. Instead, it regulates the consumption of health care, an activity in which virtually everyone will engage. Right now, people who go without insurance often shift the costs of their health care to other patients and taxpayers. That situation is different from what happens with any other type of purchase.
The WP says that government cannot force you to “buy broccoli”, but doesn’t understand a few points. First, broccoli is simply an allegory for the unfettered power of the central government, of which we already see too much. Second, the Commerce Clause doesn’t give the central government the power to dictate the purchase of a product to occur because commerce may occur, especially not when the commerce is not outside of the individual states.
4. The law is socialist.
Actually, the opposite is true. The principal reason the Affordable Care Act has been called unprecedented is that it declines to follow the New Deal approach of having a monolithic government agency be the single provider of a good or service. Instead, the law adopts a new approach, one conservatives have long supported, of using providers in the private market to deal with social and economic problems.
On this one, sort of. It is more fascistic than socialist. However, it does involve the government at all levels in health decisions, and the Exchanges are, for all purposes, run by government, which is a primary position of the Democratic Socialist political theory under the Economic Core. Much more could be said about this model among the three Democracy models (Socialist, Conservative, and Liberal), but, I won’t bore you with Political Theory.
5. The law is an extraordinary intrusion into liberty.
Nothing in the health-care law tells doctors what they must say to patients or how those patients are to be treated. It only requires people to either have insurance coverage or pay a modest tax penalty.
Actually, it does, and those of us who’ve read the bill know that bill dictates costs and treatments, and created that ‘Death Panel,” otherwise known as “The Independent Payment Advisory Board”.
Anyone else get the feeling that Obamacare supporters are getting really nervous about the Supreme Court hearing which starts Monday?
Crossed at Right Wing News and Stop The ACLU.
Read: In Debunking Myths About Obamacare, Washington Post Forgets To Debunk Them »
