Ouch! The supreme court issued a 5-4 ruling today IN FAVOR of Obamacare...and the cringer was that the most conservative justice, John Roberts, was the swing vote.
This is definately going to give Obama some momentum heading towards November election. Will it last....who knows.
Author, Joel Rosenberg, says that the ruling will put us one step closer to implosion.
(Washington, D.C., June 28, 2012) -- A disastrous,
appalling decision was handed down by the U.S. Supreme Court today. The Court
upheld the individual mandate and socialized medicine, saying both are
constitutional, despite the fact that a recent poll found 68% of Americans want
all or part of the law repealed.
The federal government can now force us
to buy what we don't want. Washington politicians and bureaucrats will become
the final arbiter of our most personal medical decisions, rationing care for
many and denying care to some who are not deemed worthy of receiving it,
especially if the care is expensive. The "Affordable Care Act" (nicknamed
"Obamacare") nationalizes 1/7th of our economy, imposes one of the largest tax
increases in American history on an economy already struggling, massively
increases government spending, and will increase the national debt by $1.15
trillion, according to a recent study.
This, despite the fact that we
already have a crushing federal debt of more than $15 trillion, and another $65
trillion in unfunded liabilities related to Social Security, Medicare and
Medicaid coming at us with breakneck speed. Our ship of state is hurtling
towards massive debt icebergs, yet rather than slow down or change direction, we
are accelerating our deficit spending.
Bottom line: the implosion of the
American economy has just become more likely.
Now let's see if we can use a little common sense to discuss this contentious issue of health care and health insurance. Let's see if we can clear some fog out of all of our heads and think clearly for a bit.
If you own a home and decide not to pay for fire insurance and your house burns down...would you demand that everyone else pay to rebuild your house? Of course not. In fact, people would proabably talk behind your back and say, "I can't believe that Dennis never had homeowners insurance. If he would have paid his $1000 per year, State Farm would be paying to rebuild his home...but he said he didn't want it because he never knew anyone whose house burned down so he thought it was a waste of money."
How about life insurance? If you went to your local State Farm office and asked the agent to sell you $1,000,000 of life insurance, he would start by asking your height, weight, health history. Next they would send a nurse to your house to take a urine sample, blood work and ask financial questions. Provided you were a good risk they would offer you the policy and you would hand them $4000 per year in exchange for them giving your family $1,000,000 if you die in the next 30 years.
So let's say YOU owned a health insurance company...meaning it was up to YOU to decide you were going to have as clients. One guy comes in and he is fit, trim, and works as an accountant in town. He has no health history and hasn't been to the doctor because he has never been sick in the past 5 years. You offer him a major medical policy for $100 per month and out the door he goes. You feel good about that client.
The next customer comes in. She is 48 year old, has a 48 inch waste, has a cigarette hanging from her mouth and has been to the doctor 12 times in the past year because her knees hurt, she can't poop, her feet hurt and her back hurts...plus she had a cough for 6 weeks that never seemed to go away...but continued smoking the whole time she was on meds.
Are you going to charge her more or less than you charged the accountant? What if the Government showed up at your door and said, "You WILL WRITE THIS LADY for the same price as you wrote the accountant...and if you don't we are going to sue your butt for discrimination!"
I'm guessing you would not be in business very long. You would go bankrupt because every person would go without insurance until they knew they had a big bunch of medical bills coming...and then they would go the health insurance company knowing they would be paying the same amount as the healthy accountant.
If the government is going to stick it's nose into health insurance...whey aren't they next going to stick it into life insurance, or homeowner's insurance and start DEMANDING that State Farm write the house that is already on fire....or the man who is going in for open heart surgery the next day who wants to buy $1 million of insurance the night before....but ONLY wants to pay what the healthy accountant is paying.
What is the answer? First off, life isn't fair and the world isn't fair...that's the first answer. The sooner you accept that fact the happier you will be. Next in line for fixing health insurance is to let people die who get sick or need procedures and have chosen to do without health insurance. "Why Dennis...that's un-godly!" Really?? Why?
Let's say that a dude wiped out on his motorcycle, had no helmet, had no insurance and cracked his skull open. The ambulance shows up on scene (yes, society would have to pay for that part) and takes him to the hospital. They look at his head and realize that fixing him in is going to cost $300K...minimum. He has no money to pay for it out of his pocket...his parents and brothers have no money to pay for it...so they give him some morphine to make him comfortable and let the guy die from his injuries.
Now let's look at what would happen REALLY QUICKLY. First off his brothers and parents would tell everyone they know that their brother died because he had no health insurance....they would tell everyone that their brother had a $500 per month Harley Davidson payment and chose NOT TO BUY health insurance and chose NOT TO WEAR a helmet. Everyone who heard the story would say, "Holy crap! If I don't have health insurance and no money set aside to pay for my care...they are gonna let me die! I'm gonna go buy some insurance INSTEAD OF BUYING THAT NEW BASS BOAT, TRUCK and JET SKI. In fact the VERY FIRST THING I'M GOING TO BUY is a major medical health plan that will cover me if I have some type of catastrophic injury." And he would teach that to his kids, and so on, and so on.
The very next thing you would know is that 90% of all Americans would be buying health insurance and trying to get the premiums reduced by living healthy lives like giving up fat food, obesity and cigarettes...and the crushing cost of health care would now be spread evenly across all of society and the there would be no more HEALTH CARE CRISIS.
Why do you think we don't have a life insurance crisis? Why do you think we don't have a homeowners insurance crisis? Because we have let the risks play out in the marketplace. We need to do the same thing for health insurance.
And that is the simple answer.