Why have people come to believe health care is a "right", when it actually isn't? (premium, death)

[PullMyFinger]

I honestly believe the biggest reason that Republicans and Conservatives are so against providing health care for the poor is because it will get more and more expensive for them to hire illegal workers to fatten their bank accounts when they have to start providing them with health care.

[jmqueen]

Originally Posted by swagger

I ignored nothing.


And yet you still wrote it...

Do you really think that you're afforded special privileges simply for being you? The facts are clear - you insulted a rather large group of people, claiming that they think they know everything, including what other people think, and almost immediately before that, you did the exact thing you complained about.

And it's not the first time you've made those kind of accusations and insults. Your history on this site makes that very, very clear.

You're … not well. Best if we all ignore you.

[aus10]

If indeed Health Care is a right granted by the governmet... and I can be taxed for not exercising that right... Can we tax those who under the second amendment have a right to a firearm... yet choose not to exercise THAT right.... Because isn't this what is being done?

We also all have a right to vote... let's tax people who don't exercise THAT right...

[Seabass Inna Bun]

Originally Posted by Goinback2011

You leeches rationalize stealing from others in such stupid ways. Leftists are ALL criminals.

Ha ha, no. Saying or thinking or doing things that make you cry is not a crime. You remind me of those mommystaters who call taxation theft because it upsets them and makes them sad. I bet you need a tissue to dry your tears and it's Obama's fault you don't have one.

[Little-Acorn]

Originally Posted by swagger

The SCOTUS basically said that the federal government has the authority to levy taxes. That's it.

Some of our louder liberal fanatics keep claiming that the Supreme Court ruled Obamacare "constitutional". The Supremes didn't, of course. They only looked at one very narrow part - the mandate that forced people to buy insurance or pay stiff penalties if they didn't. And they told the Obama lawyers that that was flatly unconstitutional.

The Obamanites tried to pretend that the government could force people to buy things, and penalize them if they didn't obey, under Congress's power to regulate Interstate Commerce. The Supreme Court flatly told them "No", and even implied bladly that such an idea was un-American:

Originally Posted by Supreme Court

People, for reasons of their own, often fail to do things that would be good for them or good for society. Those failures—joined with the similar failures of others—can readily have a substantial effect on interstate commerce. Under the Government’s logic, that authorizes Congress to use its commerce power to compel citizens to act as the Government would have them act. That is not the country the Framers of our Constitution envisioned.

Congress already enjoys vast power to regulate much of what we do. Accepting the Government’s theory would give Congress the same license to regulate what we do not do, fundamentally changing the relation between the citizen and the Federal Government.

Just as the individual mandate cannot be sustained as a law regulating the substantial effects of the failure to purchase health insurance, neither can it be upheld as a “necessary and proper” component of the insurance reforms. The commerce power thus does not authorize the mandate.

The Obamanites also tried to pretend that the part of the Constitution saying that Congress could make whatever laws that were "necessary and proper" to carry out its enumerated powers, made it OK for them to command people to buy something they might not buy otherwise. But the SUpreme Court made short work of that dodge, too:

Originally Posted by Supreme Court

As our jurisprudence under the Necessary and Proper Clause has developed, we have been very deferential to Congress’s determination that a regulation is “necessary.” We have thus upheld laws that are “‘convenient, or useful’ or ‘conducive’ to the authority’s ‘beneficial exercise.’” But we have also carried out our responsibility to declare unconstitutional those laws that undermine the structure of government established by the Constitution. Such laws, which are not “consist[ent] with the letter and spirit of the constitution,” are not “proper [means] for carrying into Execution” Congress’s enumerated powers. Rather, they are, “in the words of The Federalist, ‘merely acts of usurpation’ which ‘deserve to be treated as such.’”

Applying these principles, the individual mandate cannot be sustained under the Necessary and Proper Clause as an essential component of the insurance reforms.

The Supremes later went on to say that if the penalties spelled out in the law, weren't "penalties" but "taxes", then that could barely squeak by. The fact that the Obamanites specifically named them as penalties, and had sworn up and down that there were NO new taxes in the bill, was brushed aside. The Supremes then re-wrote the law from the bench, substituting "taxes" for "penalties", and declared that narrow part of the law Constitutional.

If the Supremes had stuck to their job, and remembered that rewriting was Congress's job, not the courts', they would have simply struck down the mandate as written, with a note to Congress saying they could make it constitutional by changing the penalties to taxes... and then re-voting on the bill in the House and Senate and passing it with the taxes explicitly in place.

But the Supremes apparently decided it was no longer necessary for the House and Senate to vote on amendments to their own acts.

[73-79 ford fan]

It is a right. All people have a right to health care and always have. The super rich like the Koch brothers are terrified that over time more and more people will come to the realization that they always have had that right which is why they fight health care reform so hard.

[Taratova]

My parents and my grandparents never had health care.. they went to the doctor and paid the bill.

[hothulamaui]

right or not, health care should be something anyone can afford. that is not the case these days

[WmMeeker]

Healthcare is a right. It is not an enshrined right but it is a right in the industrialized world along with shelter, food and water. Anything that is a right among the worst people among us like violent criminals in jail and prison is certainly a right for all people that are free.

[aus10]

Originally Posted by hothulamaui

right or not, health care should be something anyone can afford. that is not the case these days

And that's the problem that SHOULD have been addressed. Obamacare does nothing to bring down costs. It just redistributes the way those costs are paid.