passed a law requiring all law abiding of military age citizens to purchase and own a gun or face a tax penalty, would that be ok? It would certainly be constitutional now that a precedent has been set by the SCOTUS that congress can force someone to buy something or face a tax for inaction. It is also constitutional since the 2nd amendmant is quite clear about the private ownership of firearms and maintaining a militia.

Im not suggesting that they should pass such a law, in that I still firmly believe in an individual liberty, but it begs the question would the anti-gun liberals be ok with a law that they morally oppose despite the fact that it is now utterly constitutional thanks to SCOTUS and ACA.

Again, Im not advocating this law, I am merely opening the discussion about a new precedent which has been set. some day the political winds may shift, and those vocal advocates of obama care will find themselves on the opposing end of a law they dont like. It really goes to show what a dangerous precedent has been set by the SCOTUS when they give congress too much power.

[Edited on July 2, 2012 at 12:18 PM. Reason : .]

7/2/2012 12:15:57 PM

I'm guessing they would be opposed to it on the grounds that everyone owning a gun is stupid, and not on the constitutionality of the tax penalty for noncompliance.

7/2/2012 12:17:15 PM

They can oppose it as stupid all they want, as some may find the current healthcare law stupid, but if such a law were to pass because its now constitutional.....then what?

seems hypocritcal.

just goes to show how stupid this current law is for giving congress this new unchecked power to tax any kind of INACTION they please.

7/2/2012 12:22:21 PM

interestingly enough, switzerland gives a mililtary issue rifle to each adult male as part of their civic duty to the swiss militia. They are required to keep this rifle at their residence for a specific time period.

7/2/2012 12:43:18 PM

congress has always been able to tax, tax, tax away. if taxing death (estate tax) isn't taxing inactivity, i don't know what is. the issue in this case was that no one working to pass the aca (especially obama, who insisted he wouldn't tax people earning less than 250k, i.e.- "rich") wanted to call the penalties of the individual mandate a tax. no one like taxes. politicians have a nasty habit of promising not to tax people. if the law you propose was passed, it would certainly be constitutional. our system of government is designed such that checks and balances prevent, to a certain degree, stupid shit like this make believe law you describe. the politicians who made this law would have to be held accountable at the next election. to me, that is the interesting outcome of the scotus interpretation of the aca case. congress got to pass (through budget reconciliation, mind you) a very controversial law, based on the enumerated power of the ability to levy taxes, and they didn't have to own up to calling it a tax during the sausage-making - scotus did that for them, after that fact.

7/2/2012 1:02:21 PM

Quote :

"Im not suggesting that they should pass such a law, in that I still firmly believe in an individual liberty, but it begs the question would the anti-gun liberals be ok with a law that they morally oppose despite the fact that it is now utterly constitutional thanks to SCOTUS and ACA."

First, learn what "begging the question" really means.

Second, not all liberals are anti-gun.

Fucking of course "anti-gun liberals" would not be ok with a law they were morally opposed to even if it was constitutional. It used to be "utterly constitutional" to own slaves. If you lived during that time and didn't support slavery were you hypocritical?

Quit jerking off to the Constitution and join us in the 21st century. Giving a shit about our population having affordable healthcare isn't tyranny. Mandating insurance isn't the best solution but I'm nearly certain you'd like the real solution (actual Universal Healthcare) even less.

7/2/2012 1:16:04 PM

Quote :

"not all liberals are anti-gun"

which is why I specified anti-gun liberals

Quote :

"of course "anti-gun liberals" would not be ok with a law they were morally opposed to even if it was constitutional. It used to be "utterly constitutional" to own slaves. If you lived during that time and didn't support slavery were you hypocritical?"

Im not saying its hypocritical to oppose a constitutional law, im saying its hypocritical to oppose a similar constitutional act to one someone supported earlier

Quote :

"Quit jerking off to the Constitution and join us in the 21st century"

How is it "jerking off" to respect the law of the land? See this is what I dont understand about some liberals. They completely pick and choose which parts of the constitution they like, and which parts they feel are outdated, obsolete or just plain dont like. And to be perfectly fair, some Republicans can do the same damn thing as well.

You cant just say its obsolute though, seeing as how the founders had the foresight to put a mechanism in place to legally amend it whenever times changed.

I find it grossly hypocritical though for a liberal occupy moron to drape themselves in the first amendment for their "peaceful assembly", while at the same time claiming the constitution is obsolete. Or how about some liberal hippy growing weed in his house, I doubt he'd like the cops to just bust into his house without a warrant, seems like the 4th amendment is pretty good in that situation.

I look at the constitution as an all or nothing document, to be taken literally not interpretated through judicial activism. if there is something that needs to be changed, then let congress amend it the right way.

7/2/2012 2:03:31 PM

Quote :

"Quit jerking off to the Constitution and join us in the 21st century."

that's just silly

7/2/2012 2:24:58 PM

Quote :

"through budget reconciliation, mind you"

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act was not passed via budget reconciliation; however, another bill to amend that newly-passed law and also make changes to student loans did use reconciliation and was signed a week afterward, on 30 March 2010.

7/2/2012 2:34:26 PM

Quote :

"Im not saying its hypocritical to oppose a constitutional law, im saying its hypocritical to oppose a similar constitutional act to one someone supported earlier"

Only if they said that they oppose it on Constitutional grounds. Then their conflicting interpretations of the Constitution would indeed be hypocritical. Do you think requiring automobile insurance is against the Constitution, by chance?

Quote :

" look at the constitution as an all or nothing document, to be taken literally not interpretated through judicial activism. if there is something that needs to be changed, then let congress amend it the right way."

You've yet to explain what it is about the ACA which is in violation of the Constitution. So I'm left wondering what the point of your hypothetical "require everyone to own guns" law even is.

^What's silly is getting bent out of shape about helping poor Americans get afforable healthcare. That's the difference between reality and the OPs contrived hypocrisy. One law helps poor sick people, the other gives weapons to everyone.

7/2/2012 2:41:10 PM

Quote :

"You've yet to explain what it is about the ACA which is in violation of the Constitution. So I'm left wondering what the point of your hypothetical "require everyone to own guns" law even is. "

I would argue that the mandate was unconstitutional as part of the commerce clause, however due to the SCOTUS over stepping their bounds and re-writing the law for congress, it is apparently now constitutional by judicial activism. In this thread I am more arguing about the dangerous precedent which has now been set, and not so much the constitutionality of the ACA (that is another thread all together).

the mandate was always argued to be a penalty and not a tax under the commerce clause, and Obama had always denied it was a tax, but Roberts basically re-wrote the law to frame it as a tax and not a penalty so that it could be loosely interpreted as constitutional. So the precedent to which i keep referring is the one that has now granted congress a very broad definition of what a tax is, and what type of behavior or lack thereof they can tax.

If you cant see the danger and loss of liberty in this, then you are either being dishonest or naive.

.

[Edited on July 2, 2012 at 3:21 PM. Reason : .]

7/2/2012 3:18:41 PM

RABBLE RABBLE RABBLE

I DON'T AGREE WITH THIS LEGISLATION THEREFORE IT IS UN-CONSTITUTIONAL

RABBLE RABBLE RABBLE

7/2/2012 3:42:39 PM

The tax clause is the new commerce clause

[Edited on July 2, 2012 at 4:21 PM. Reason : I'm not even really sure why it wasn't upheld under the commerce clause. See Wickard v. Filburn]

7/2/2012 4:20:24 PM

Quote :

"Quit jerking off to the Constitution and join us in the 21st century"

This. The Constitution isn't the law of the land and hasn't been in some time. It's a relic. The only real limitations on state power are what Congress can agree on, and more importantly, who can influence Congress with money. If you don't have money and a team of corporate lobbyists, no one in power is interested in your opinion.

Just stop worrying yourself with things like "constitutionality". Anti-Bush liberals were complaining about the constitutionality of the war in Iraq 5 years ago because it was convenient. Anti-Obama conservatives are now complaining about constitutionality of "Obamacare"/whatever else. None of the politicians care about upholding the Constitution unless it gets them re-elected.

7/2/2012 4:37:23 PM

Quote :

"What's silly is getting bent out of shape about helping poor Americans get afforable healthcare"

It is silly to believe this. Tell me what part makes you think this will make health insurance more affordable? Seems to me this will only make it more expensive.

Remember the people were told how much medicaid was going to save taxpayers in the 60s too. Not so much. Also those medicare projections were dead on accurate as well. Silly

7/2/2012 6:08:23 PM

Quote :

"I'm not even really sure why it wasn't upheld under the commerce clause. See Wickard v. Filburn"

See the Roberts opinion: Basically he said "but Wickard was about regulation of activity, while a mandate would be compulsion toward activity."

Anyway, for red baron 22, your logic is flawed there: Just because an action fails to fall under the Commerce Clause does not mean it's unconstitutional; rather, it would need to either fail to fall under all enumerated powers or trigger one restriction on power.
In fact, the opinion of Roberts said that although it didn't fall within the expansive scope that the Court has placed on the Commerce Clause, it did fall within the Spending Clause and was therefore within the power of Congress.
Seriously, think about it: If "unconstitutional as part of the commerce clause" held water, that would mean that for an act of Congress to be constitutional, it would need to be an exercise of all of its enumerated powers at once, an unlikely scenario.

(Personally I would have bought the argument that health insurance was fundamentally "different" from most things that people could conceivably be mandated to purchase and voted to uphold both it, and even a sufficiently strong mandate, under the Elastic Clause.)

7/2/2012 6:49:56 PM

You people are so missing the point. This is not about debating the constitutionality of this, like it or not SCOTUS upheld it thereby making it constitutional. I disagree, but I am currently not seated on the supreme court last time I checked.

This is about the consequences of the precedent which has been set. What happens when congress, drunk on their own power, mandates you to do something you DONT like or agree with under penalty of tax and prison for failure to pay the tax.

7/2/2012 7:01:37 PM

Quote :

"like it or not SCOTUS upheld it thereby making it constitutional"

Uhm, no. We don't have to accept their wrongful interpretation of the constitution willingly, I don't care who they are or how smart they think they may be. All because they said it's constitutional, doesn't make it constitutional.

If the planetary alliance told you that Pluto was a dog, and upheld it was a dog, we have a problem with the planetary alliance and we must fix it instead of going along with it.

7/2/2012 7:09:43 PM

Quote :

"What happens when congress, drunk on their own power, mandates you to do something you DONT like or agree with under penalty of tax and prison for failure to pay the tax."

Um, that already happens. I don't generally like giving my money to have people killed, but I am required to do so by the government.

7/2/2012 7:10:06 PM

I'd probably go buy a gun and learn to shoot the motherfucker since every asshole in the country will have one.

7/2/2012 9:24:30 PM

So what's this thread about exactly? That you have a right to be mad?

Sure, go right ahead and be mad. I'm sure if this hypothetical law you've come up with passed anti-gun people would be mad, but not because of constitutional reasons but because their side lost, the same reason you're mad right now.

7/2/2012 11:19:52 PM

Quote :

"Uhm, no. We don't have to accept their wrongful interpretation of the constitution willingly, I don't care who they are or how smart they think they may be. All because they said it's constitutional, doesn't make it constitutional. "

I agree with you.

Quote :

"Um, that already happens. I don't generally like giving my money to have people killed, but I am required to do so by the government."

There is a huge difference between your taxes going towards something you disagree with, and congress now having the power to tax you for not doing something yourself.

Those of you that still cant see this dangerous precedent, I feel sorry for you.

7/2/2012 11:30:08 PM

The difference between your gun scenario and health care, is that we are all already paying for poor peoples' health care.

Either through higher premiums, greater costs for medical care, corruption/cronyism, and probably tons of other mechanisms.

If a poor sick person walks into a hospital, they get cared for. Right now, the hospital has to try to cover these costs somehow.

Under the new system, rather than the hospital guessing where these compensations come from, they know.

Obamacare does nothing to affect how much you are paying for poor peoples' healthcare, we are all ALREADY doing this.

7/3/2012 12:00:54 AM

this thread is not about obamacare

7/3/2012 12:09:36 AM

There's no way for this thread to not be about the ACA to a certain degree. It provides both context for the ruling itself and context for application of the ruling to other issues (if it ever is).

You would have a point if the ACA consisted of nothing but the mandate (buy insurance or pay the fine). Unfortunately, it doesn't and you don't.

7/3/2012 12:43:50 AM

Quote :

"Those of you that still cant see this dangerous precedent, I feel sorry for you."

Surely the 8th amendment will save us from Congressional overreach; also if you actually read the Roberts opinion, you'll see that the fact that the "shared responsibility payment" is so much lower than what the payer would have had to pay for health insurance that it doesn't come close to crossing the line into effectively forcing people to buy it factors into his determination that unlike the "child labor tax" that he compared it to (which was ruled unconstitutional in the early 20th century), this payment did constitute a legitimate exercise of the taxing power.

TL;DR: If a tax for any activity or inactivity is too onerous, Roberts sez that goes too far.

7/3/2012 6:32:43 AM

Quote :

"What happens when congress, drunk on their own power, mandates you to do something you DONT like or agree with under penalty of tax and prison for failure to pay the tax."

i'm pretty sure debtor's prison is something the federal government has not done since the 1800s. i also think i read somewhere that there are certain groups exempted from the mandate - refusal on religious grounds, for example. again, i think that answer to "what happens when congress ..." is always that the house faces re-election every two years.

Quote :

"this thread is not about obamacare"

except that it is. if you are suggesting some death spiral tyranny of the majority, i think the onus is on you to demonstrate that scotus has and will use legal precedent blindly, without taking into account the specific situation.

i understand the principle of your argument. i'm also probably on your side in terms of my overall opinion of the aca. i don't think obamacare will achieve all it is boasted to achieve. i also think it will end up costing more than it was at first estimated to cost, and that it completely ignored some important issues, like tort reform. but the reality is we are not starting from scratch with health care. the need to preserve negative rights isn't completely lost on those who grudgingly accept the individual mandate, but they understand that the situation is already complicated by health care essentially becoming a positive right since emtala, and, like it or not, emtala is not going away any time soon.

7/3/2012 10:52:47 AM

Quote :

"i also think i read somewhere that there are certain groups exempted from the mandate - refusal on religious grounds, for example."

haha, if it's like opting out of social security, you gotta be amish and get one of their preachers or whatever to sign off that you actually are amish.

7/3/2012 11:04:16 AM

Quote :

"They can oppose it as stupid all they want, as some may find the current healthcare law stupid, but if such a law were to pass because its now constitutional.....then what? seems hypocritcal."

You don't make any sense.

Congress may pass something that someone doesn't like at any time. In fact, I'm pretty sure congress has never passed something that at least someone didn't like. The only assurance we have that congress won't pass a law requiring everyone to own a gun is that people in congress don't support such a thing. If most people in congress started supporting the idea and they voted on it, then they would pass it.

The topic at hand, not whatever irrelevant nonsense you tangent into, is that the supreme court wouldn't strike down such a law if they are consistent with their last decision. If you are counting on the supreme court to keep congress from doing stupid stuff... well, I vaguely remember that one of the justices addressed this exact point - that is not their job.

7/3/2012 11:18:21 AM

United States Senator Mike Lee
?"I was hoping the Supreme Court would do its job of restricting federal power. It didn't do its job, and now we have to rely on the political process to fix this problem."

7/3/2012 3:09:16 PM

well apparently they decided that the supreme court's job of restricting legislative power does not include striking down tax penalties for not buying a product.

7/3/2012 3:12:51 PM

Quote :

"tax penalties for not buying a product."

It should go without saying that something less than this started a revolutionary war in this country at the start of our country.

I think that these changes have come so fast that people are in shock and disbelief that this is happening in America.

7/3/2012 3:52:33 PM

Well, they're using the power they already had (taxation) to accomplish something new (compel people to buy something).

The pre- revolutionary war tax grievances aren't necessarily different by nature, I agree. If I understand it, it was just a classic case of "the taxes are too damned high!" If anything, what we have now is more involved than what the king did, which was using the colonies as a moneymaker like the rest of their empire.

I do see, however, that it would be difficult to strike down what they try to do with Obamacare while still allowing the wide variety of tax loopholes and subsidies we have today. Perhaps carrots for buying hybrid vehicles are constitutional but sticks for not buying insurance are not. I think that's a tough sell, and the only way to get around it would be to cite the fact that the bill authors called it a mandate.

7/3/2012 4:16:33 PM

7/3/2012 4:24:39 PM

Who here doesn't pay for health insurance?

[Edited on July 3, 2012 at 6:58 PM. Reason : ,]

7/3/2012 6:58:14 PM

I sure as hell don't

instead I follow the Republican Health Care Plan

7/3/2012 8:44:09 PM

I stopped paying.

I figured many will play, few will win a big payout.

7/3/2012 8:55:03 PM

How does that make sense.

7/3/2012 11:11:59 PM

It's fairly simple to see.

People like my terminally ill sister have accrued $1,800,000 of medical bills from the age of 16 to 24 because she has like 8 to 9 surgeries a year. All of these tests are experiments, not cures. They even gave her chemo, not for cancer, but for a lung-glue problem. The doctors are ridiculous and she can't change doctors due to health care coverage. She will most likely die from be an experiment rather than from her illness.

Anyway...

She didn't pay in that amount of money INTO insurance, so someone else is losing their insurance money.

Multiply this times the number of patients that are stuck in the hospital for equally terminal diseases.
Multiply this times the number of kids who haven't put any money into the system.

That means your money isn't going to be there LATER in life because they are using YOUR money allotted for YOUR future medical bills, on OTHER patients TODAY.

Your money also has to fund insurers' paycheck, taxes, mortgages, paperwork, attorneys, and every other expense it takes to run the insurance company. (All that money could be cut out of the budget if you do finances directly with the doctor)

Insurance is the biggest ponzi scheme ever known to our country. It's designed to ruin the country and I maintain that America is being brought to its knees on purpose.

7/4/2012 12:31:14 PM

Instead, if you're uninsured and get gravely ill...sux2bu, the best outcome is medical bankruptcy

7/4/2012 12:33:48 PM

^ most likely, people will get the treatment they need, and just ignore the bill.

Sticking the hospital with it, which takes it out on everyone else anyway.

^^ if people did business directly with a dr. who would pay for your sister's bills? Did she have a spare 1.8 million $$ laying around?

[Edited on July 4, 2012 at 12:44 PM. Reason : ]

7/4/2012 12:42:20 PM

You're absolutely correct, moron.

If medical bills are too expensive for 90% of Americans to afford without insurance
and the medical bills that are paid are greater than what 90% of Americans put into it,
then either

1) Insurance is losing money
2) Stealing money from a vast majority of people who HAVE insurance but don't use it.


Now insurance is going to cover 10 million more people's hospital bills that they didn't have to care about previously, including those with pre-existing illnesses.

7/4/2012 12:52:23 PM

Isn't this what happens when we pay tax and the government spends it on the military?

I don't want a significant portion of the spending the government does "on my behalf," but that's how a tax works

Your scenario is actually better than a regular tax since you are directly getting something in return (a gun) rather than a military that is assuring us it is doing wise things

7/4/2012 1:07:58 PM

I see your point, but a ponzi scheme is when you expect a return on your investment later down the road. A ponzi scheme is able to satisfy early and initial investors' returns, but the returns won't be there for the people down the road because the money was already spent today.

7/4/2012 1:22:42 PM

Quote :

"Insurance is the biggest ponzi scheme ever known to our country."

You're an idiot. Insurance is not a ponzi scheme. Insurance is a calculated gamble based on the law of large numbers. Most people don't receive more in benefits than they pay in premiums plus interest on those premiums over the life of a policy. If you have a large enough pool of people you can easily afford to pay out large claims on a pretty regular basis, and because they don't just stuff the premiums in a mayonnaise jar but in fact invest it there is even more money than just premiums available when it is needed. This is what insurance does. It's not a difficult concept to understand.

Philosophically, all insurance works the same way. The problem with medical insurance is not the basic idea, it is the execution of the payment system.

7/4/2012 1:58:11 PM

I'm not here to call you an idiot or criticize you.
I'm here to help you understand.

The lottery system is a calculated gamble. Lots of people play, but there is only a few winners and a majority are losers.

The casino system is a calculated gamble. Lots of people play, but there is only a few winners and a majority are losers.

IF, we took your idea that the health care system is a calculated gamble, there is only a few winners and a majority are losers.

The only difference between the lottery and casino versus the health care gamble, is that the payout is much larger than what people pay in. Meaning there are city-sized populations of winners and everyone who lives is expected to become ill or terminally ill at least once in their lifetime.

I bet the healthcare system is about to go under because they can't afford to pay the returns from the policies they have right now.
They can't keep raising the investors(policy holders) rates because people are dropping out because insurance costs too much.

The only way to keep a ponzi scheme going is to collect from more investors (who don't use the system).

Therefore, this bill HAD to pass in order to save the entire system from collapsing.

It's only a temporary fix, however, because there are no more investors after an all inclusive bill is passed.

[Edited on July 4, 2012 at 2:27 PM. Reason : .]

7/4/2012 2:24:17 PM

I'm not "paying into" anything with my insurance. I pay a flat monthly charge so in the event I get hit by a car I don't go bankrupt. I'm not expecting anything back apart from owing less money in the event something happens. That's why its call insurance.

7/4/2012 2:28:11 PM

How much do you pay monthly, sir.

7/4/2012 2:39:19 PM

$187. It's hospital insurance that pays for a doctors visit with no copay every 6 months or so. I'm an independent contractor so my company does not pay for anything. It's not great but protects me in the event of an emergency.

[Edited on July 4, 2012 at 2:45 PM. Reason : Copay]

7/4/2012 2:45:00 PM

If you're paying $187/m

you're paying $1,870 every 10 months.
you're paying $11,220 every 60 months. (5 years)
you're paying $112,200 every 50 years.

What's your deductible per year?

7/4/2012 3:09:08 PM