Thursday, December 24, 2009

Legal Challenges to US Health Reform

By David Swanson
December 24, 2009

Does the United States Constitution allow Congress to force people to purchase a product (health insurance) from a private corporation, and fine them or tax them if they refuse?

Read on.
Posted by at

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

We mandate insurance on cars what's the dif?

Thu Dec 24, 10:29:00 AM 2009
fact checker said...

Here's one big difference, one can choose not to drive, and therefore be exempt from buying auto insurance.

With the health insurance mandate, you are REQUIRED to buy the product whether you want it or not, whether you use it or not -- and if you don't buy it you are fined.

Thu Dec 24, 11:09:00 AM 2009
Chris said...

The State forcing behavior AND actions...

The definition of tyranny.

Of course this is bipartisan - so is the Government itself.

actually it is one party - the Government.

While the article uses good philosophical premises, who knows if most of the readers of this site will grasp the philosophy of statism is endemic to whatever their philosophy is and/or solutions to the RESULT of the intervention into the market by the Government gun??????

Thu Dec 24, 11:56:00 AM 2009
Zeno said...

At very significant levels of generality as well as of concreteness we seem to be hovering, existentially even, upon a political, economic and socio-cultural installation of what not so long ago was understood as Syndicalism. The struggle is becoming one of the Person against the "Person", the latter including the State. The Hard Right has been quite efficient and successful over the post-60's domestic scene as to have achieved the blurring of quite long-standing boundaries and limits between fundamental concepts, institutions, forms, organizational structures, etc.

Marx used to call such a move amalgamation. And its penetrating and extending into every aspect of our social lives.

2010 will be quite interesting in many ways, methinks.

Thu Dec 31, 05:19:00 AM 2009
ChMoore said...

OK; so it's commerce for the insurance company, but the argument is it's not commerce for a forced consumer.

Fascinating - in whatever sense that economic slavery can be fascinating. The analogy I think of is - what if I were forced by penalty of a fine to buy super-lotto tickets for the reason of keeping the lottery system solvent?

Thu Dec 31, 04:15:00 PM 2009
ChMoore said...

Reply to all the arguments about car insurance.

Car Insurance is NOT a mandate. Nobody has a blanket requirement to buy it.

It's simply a condition of receiving a license to drive. No car insurance - no driving - period. Also, even then you don't have to insure your own loss, just liability for the loss of others.

And there IS a public option; otherwise known as public transportation.

Thu Dec 31, 05:14:00 PM 2009

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