If Obamacare Goes, Will America 'Let Him Die'?

The tragic consequences of the health care debate

Apr. 02, 2012

midnight

Despite significant negative signals, the final outcome of this week's arguments over the Affordable Care Act will remain unknown until the Supreme Court issues a ruling in June. What is painfully obvious today, however, should have been clear enough long before any of the lawyers opened their mouths. The five Republican justices represent an ideological bloc as adamantly hostile to universal health care today—no matter the cost in lost lives or squandered trillions—as in 1965, when Medicare passed. If the high court voids the law's insurance mandate (once promoted by the same politicians and policy-makers who now scorn it), we know how tea party Republicans would cope with the financial problem posed by ill and injured people who show up at hospitals without coverage. They told us last fall during the presidential debate in Tampa, Fla., when they cheered for the comment, "Let him die!" Neither the Republican justices nor the lawyers challenging the law were nearly so crude in court. Indeed, Michael Carvin, the eminent attorney representing the National Federation of Independent Business, specifically rejected the notion that overturning health reform could result in denying care to the uninsured, during a crucial exchange with Justice Sonia Sotomayor. Sotomayor noted that the American populace, by and large, would not stand for emergency-room personnel turning away a parent who brought in a sick or injured son or daughter because they lacked insurance. "Do you think there's a large percentage of the American population that would stand for the death of that child?" Sotomayor asked. "[A child who] had an allergic reaction and a simple shot would have saved the child?" In his response, Carvin scolded, "One of the more pernicious, misleading impressions that the government has made is that we are somehow advocating that people be...thrown out of emergency rooms, or that this alternative that they've hypothesized is going to be enforced by throwing people out of emergency rooms." Medicare for All Is a Better Alternative But the alternative proposed by Carvin and Paul Clement, the attorney for the states challenging the law, was astonishingly absurd (much like their repeated claim that the health "market" is like the market for any other commodity and should be treated as such). The problem of the uninsured receiving uncompensated care paid for by everyone else could be eliminated, they argued, by requiring them to buy insurance when they need it—that is, when they show up at the hospital. How many needless, cruel deaths such an alternative might cause is something we may yet learn if the court majority accepts the plaintiffs' callous position. Serious illness or injury doesn't magically make insurance affordable to families that could not afford it before—and only someone prepared to let people suffer would pretend that it does. If the Affordable Care Act is voided, and Americans must start over again on a project completed decades ago in all the other advanced industrial nations, then perhaps we should look in the direction indicated by Carvin himself, a leading member of the right-wing Federalist Society. "I want to understand the choices you're saying Congress has (under the Constitution)," Sotomayor said. "Congress can tax everybody and set up a public health system?" "Yes," Carvin replied. "I would accept that." In fact, he probably wouldn't—and certainly the Republicans wouldn't without losing an enormous struggle first—but at least now their chosen advocate is on the record suggesting that "Medicare for All" would pass constitutional standards. And considering how popular Medicare remains, even among many elderly voters who identify with the tea party, that might be the right place to begin again. © 2012 Creators.com

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Lazy people? Lack of gumption?

How about Law of ...

Lazy people? Lack of gumption?

How about Law of Supply and Demand. when the Supply of Workers is too plentiful, their Wages go down. When the Supply of Goods and Services is limited (matters not if naturally or artificially), the prices go up. Speculators and Unions both use their power to limit the supply to drive up the price of what they are selling. So we have some squeezed out. Like shortages of food and prey in nature, that means those who demand must die, the weakest ones especially. How harsh nature is, and how harsh free market is. Those godless heathens... but wait!

Conservatives, especially those who hide behind the Bible are the true evolutionists! They do not preach all are equal like the godless liberal secularists do, they preach "survival of the fittest", they preach that it is okay to segregate the members of their flock from those who are not (voter ID) card carrying members. They will turn away (or shoot) those non-members at their door. They will extend favors to their own members, and will deny opportunity to the outsiders. -- Funny, that's not how the nuns in my catholic school phrased it when I was growing up.

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Insurance - what a corrupt thing that is. Listen up, follow this reasoning. When an entrepreneur sells a "good", he must obtain the raw materials, hire the labor to convert the materials into a widget (or sandwich). At the end of the transaction the customer walks away with something they hold in their hand. When similar entrepreneur sells a "service", they still have to hire the labor to perform the service, may not even have any materials, involved, it could just be the renting the skilled operation of the owner's "capital equipment" (barber's chair, hair clippers). At the end of the deal, the customer has had something about them changed for the better.

But insurance... the customer pays, but what did the entrepreneur provide to the customer? Like a bookie's bet, Merely a "promise" to pay in case something happens. And thanks to crafty fine print and the gradual issuing of "amended terms" of the contract, this promise often turns out to be an "empty promise".

Two things we all hate... Taxes, which for some of us, we clearly pay in, and never get it back, we know it goes to someone else who is not paying taxes. That's the current mood, the "Taxed Enough Already" Party. The second thing is paying for something you know you will not likely collect on... Insurance, especially the "we are all in the same pool" kind, where those who are living right are paying the premiums, but unlikely to collect, and those who are not living right are more likely to collect. The free market way to deal with that was to set up risk pools, in other words, to segregate the money pools, even leave some pools totally unserved. One thing was clear about all members of a pool. All members of any given risk pool must pay equal premiums, no matter if they could afford to pay it or not. That's the price of paying for an equal chance of drawing a claim. Taxes on the other hand are levied on "ability to pay", instead of "equality of need".

Is it any wonder that no-one would buy insurance except for 2 reasons? One being that it is tied to the granting of a private loan, "no insurance, no loan", got to carry the stuff so that when the customer screws up what they bought with that loan, their is no incentive to keep paying on that loan when the house is burned down or the car is totaled (can't repo when it is gone). It is simply to protect the lender's interest. The other reason is that the borrower already has something else of value, doesn't want the lender to sue them and take that other thing of value away. People who have nothing left to lose have no incentive to continue their promise to pay.

Now, it was clear that ObamaCare was never going to be passed if it meant GOVERNMENT collecting an "Ability to Pay" TAX and redistributing it to the known neediest (instead of the unknown lottery payout). They also knew that the conservatives demanded "Privatization" and "For Profit", so that's why it was chosen to say people must buy for private health insurance. Like the Money Lenders requiring insurance to be purchased by all who want to be the recipient of their payouts, they chose the public mandate.

Unconstitutional? Either way, the only way it was ever going to happen, public taxes or publicly enforced "mandate to buy private", was to enforce a way that some will be paying more than they will be collecting, and others will be collecting more than they are paying.

I'm convinced that Obama knew it was bad, but pass it anyway. When the Middle Class voter got a taste of what they like, the no pre-existing conditions part, being able to unsure their kids a little longer, Obama knew that they would rather fix it than to throw it away. Part of the fix may even be to regulate profit out of the healthcare system, which may mean for profit private enterprise will sump it, let it be picked up by civil servants in the government instead.

Last point. The business owners, minority that they are, would actually prefer public insurance, so they do not have to pay it out of their business profits! Just like the business owner would prefer amnesty for immigrants, and public education and job prep for minorities... its called a cheaper workforce! -- Is it any wonder that many of the wealthy turn liberal?

Anonymous more than 12 years ago

All Liberals want you to believe if we dont have o...

All Liberals want you to believe if we dont have obama care people will left to die. Especially poor people. Wrong. Couldnt be further from the truth. My bro inlaw is a xray tech at a large hospital. He has said on many occasions the so called poor people come in for the sniffles all on the tax payers dime. Many are obese and highly demanding. They realize its free to them so they dont care. Normal people go to the doctor only when its really called for, simply because it costs money. Obama care will not solve anything and make it worse. Much worse. Repealing it will be good for all of us and the poor will still be able to scam the system as usual which should make the libs happy.

Anonymous more than 12 years ago

We do have lot of lazy people who just will not b...

We do have lot of lazy people who just will not bother to get health insurance. They want to lay in their hammocks drinking tall boys hoping the government will simply sign them up. And their poor children suffer from their parents hateful and selfish acts. We need to crack down hard on people who won't buy health insurance. Everyone I know who doesn't have health insurance has many other luxuries such as cells phones, internet, cable tv, a car, buys lotto tickets and enjoys drinking alcohol. If they have children they have recklessly fornicated. If they truly cannot afford health insurance we have medicaid. Life is not easy but some people just want the easy way out at someone else's expense. Lower income people want the harder working people to make up for their lack gumption.

Anonymous more than 12 years ago