My husband retired from IBM about a decade ago, and as we aren’t old enough for Medicare we still buy our health insurance through the company. But IBM, with its typical courtesy, informed us recently that we will be fined by the state.
Why? Because Massachusetts requires every resident to have health insurance, and this year, without informing us directly, the state had changed the rules in a way that made our bare-bones policy no longer acceptable.
Nothing to do with her policy. It’s all about the TAX.
bl
Although I support in principal a mandate for health insurance (it really is the only viable alternative to a single payer system), clearly this is a case where the state is gumming things up. These people are doing it right. Health insurance should be used for emergencies not routine stuff. If someone can demonstrate that they have…
1. A viable policy that covers major and catastrophic medical expenses and …
2. They have enough money set aside to cover routine care routine medical care and the occasional minor medical crisis not covered by their insurance.
…then they should be left alone.
Where in the Constitution does it say that we are to have health care?
Re # 3
LMS,
It doesn’t say anything about it anywhere. Neither does it mention parks, libraries, an interstate highway system or an Air Force to name just a few things that 99% of Americans believe are positive things for our country and which the Federal Government provides at least in part for.
This is the sort of thing which will be happening all over the country if some version of the Congressional Democratic plan is passed. Stripped-down major medical plans will not be on the approved list, and young people, or people like these in the article, will be required to buy a more expensive plan or pay penalty taxes.
Re #3 Not to mention that if you don’t have insurance, somebody else must pick up the tab for your care if something catastrophic happens to you.
Air Force and Interstate Highway System fall under ‘common defense’ (Eisenhower proposed the IHS as a way to move troops rapidly from one area to another, based on the autobahn of Germany.)
Re #7
Libraryjim,
National Health Insurance could just as easily be justified as promoting the general welfare.
nope, not as clear a connection. Moving troops and having an air-deployed force IS definitely defense related.
Promoting the general welfare is nebulous enough to warrant a “hey, States, this one is your job under the 9th and 10th Amendments”.
I’m from Massachusetts, and the “Universal Healthcare” law is depleting the State’s treasury faster than what Katrina did to New Orleans’ levies. Any national plan based upon the MA version is a disaster in the making. It must not happen!
Ad Orientem, please check the US Constitution. Libraryjim is correct.
H
Actually the preamble to the constitution vests no authority at all. It’s just a statement of what they hope to accomplish. In #8 I was being facetious (though that appears to have been lost on everyone). Strict constructionists are limited to the enumerated powers listed in Art I sec 8 or the various amendments. Which brings me back to my #4.
12, which means that much of what the Federal Government does is unconstitutional. Which is why, in many cases, the Constitution is not worth the parchment it is printed on.
Certainly there is no mention of national parks in the U. S. Constitution. So they, just as certainly, are beyond the scope of the federal government.
There is no mention of the federal government buying land from foreign governments. So the Louisiana Purchase must be returned to France, Alaska to Russia and the Gadsden Purchase to Mexico.
The Center for Disease Control and the Surgeon General must go. No mention of these in the Constitution. So must the Food and Drug Administration. No mention of controlling radio frequencies; goodbye Federal Communications Commission.
No mention of acquiring territory by act of war; goodbye parts of southern Texas and a bunch of U. S. “possessions”. Where does the Constitution mention anything about acquiring places like Puerto Rico, Guam, etc.?
For that matter, the U. S. Constitution doesn’t give power to the federal government to forbid abortion or to define marriage.
Trim it all back. O.K., we can have an Army, Navy and Air Force–but not for adventures in Korea, Vietnam and Iraq. We can have a federal banking system to issue currency and regulate its value. It’s not clear from the Constitution that we should have a Department of Justice. No FBI, but Treasury can have its agents to capture counterfeiters.
But deficit financing is constitutional.
[blockquote]Section 8 – Powers of Congress
[b]The Congress shall have Power To[/b] lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and [b]provide for[/b] the common Defence and [b]general Welfare[/b] of the United States[/blockquote]
…
[blockquote]To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers, and all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any Department or Officer thereof.[/blockquote]
Ken, [Edited]. And you are right most of this would have to go. You know what the answer is if you want these things? Amend the Constitution or call a Constitutional convention.
[Edited by Elf]
Over the weekend I ran into a former patient that I knew 3 years ago (before I moved to a different state). She is under 30 but is on disability and has medicare due to a number of problems related to her premature birth. These include cardiac arrhythmias requring an indwelling pacemaker defibrillator, epilepsy, and she has recently developed an autoimmune disorder called lupus erythamatosis. Despite these she is actually in pretty good shape, a college graduate, married, and able to do most things. She is also currently pregnant and in her third trimester, but tells me that she has been unable to find any physician to treat her since I left the area 3 years ago, because they say “I’m too complicated”. She has been advised to get her care exclusively at the Mayo clinic (over 18 hours away by car – and obviously she can’t drive). She was hoping that I might be able to see her again but I work for the VA system now and don’t see any private patients. There are over 8 neurologists and at least as many cardiologists in the local area but none of them see medicaid and all have now closed their practices to new Medicare patients. She has not yet found a family physician or an obstetrician yet, “they all say I’m too high risk” and her plan is to “crash the ER when I go into labor”.
I did not have anything useful to tell her. Children have already largely been excluded from specialty care, but this is not because they don’t have medical insurance. The ease of covering children with medicaid has meant that even the children of the affluent who have significant medical problems are covered by Medicaid. Children are excluded from specialty care because all specialists around here have closed their practices to pediatrics. Used to be that all specialists saw both adults and children. I was the last holdout for over 5 years before I closed my practice. Children with complex diseases are now advised to “go to the university hospital because you’re too complicated”. Currently the folks around here seem to be planning to close their practices to “geriatrics” (eg anyone over 65) for the same reason. I don’t blame them. Seeing complex patients with lousy insurance is a short cut to going bancrupt while working yourself into the grave. I saw both adults and children (medicaid, medicare and uninsured) up until 8 months ago and the only reason I did not cut my throat was because I have children of my own to consider. Moving to government service was the best thing that happened to me in my life. I feel like a captive released from prison. I see the sun in the morning. I see the sun in the evening. I see the sun on the weekends. I see my children in the evenings and on the weekends. I never had that back in private practice. And I will not go back. Even though I know that folks will die because I will not be their slave, I will not go back.
Health insurance is not health care. Massachusetts has found this out, and the rest of the US will soon learn this also. However the health system that has been/will be destroyed will not be resurrected even if they change the law a few years later. It takes 7 years after medical school to produce most specialists. It takes two generations to change a culture. We had a generation of physicians who were willing to sacrifice their lives to make sure their patients got taken care of. That generation has been sued, abused, maligned and dismissed. We will not see its like again in our lifetimes.
And we will deserve the “care” that we get.
http://ducknetweb.blogspot.com/2009/10/mayo-clinic-and-medicare-patients-some.html
Oops. The mayo clinic appears to be limiting the number of Medicaid and Medicare patients she sees, and further will no longer accept Medicare for patients seeking primary care. Patients seeking primary care will need to pay an annual $250 fee, plus fees of $175 to $400 per visit.
“Crashing the ER when I go into labor”, while paying high taxes and penalties for “health insurance” that nobody accepts appears to be the plan for Obamacare.
On the good side, if people never see the physician, it will bring down costs.
#14 – I see your point Br. Michael. But perhaps you could point me to something that never had any government help. You seem to forget that, um, we actually vote and expect our leaders to make decisions about these things. In a democracy, the majority wins. I admit I’m perplexed you would think that the US is a totalitarian government (not surprised, however). It is, perhaps, a plutocracy. You seem to take the plutocrat’s side: this country is essentially for the rich, and the government should not protect the common welfare of other people.
No public education; no interstate roads; no GI bill. We’d probably be ill prepared for any kind of massive health catastrophe. Personally, it sounds like Somalia.
The idea that government is always evil and businesses are always good is more like a religion than empirically true. As the recent Nobel prize winners have demonstrated.
John, my point is that the Federal Government is a government of limited powers. It is a republic not a democracy. The are checks and balances that are designed to make government inefficient. There are checks and balances that protect minorities from majority tyranny (a fact that liberals talk out of both sides of their mouth depending on whether they are in the majority). The fact that the federal government has no power to do something simply means that the States will have to do it.
A government that can do something for you can do something to you.
But if you are happy to have the federal government cut loose from constitutional checks and balances, enjoy.
14. Br. Michael wrote:
[blockquote]Ken, [Edited].[/blockquote]
[Edited]
The fact is that the Constitution of the United States grants the Congress, which we the people elect to represent us in the federal government, “the Power To … provide for the … general Welfare” and gives the Congress authority “To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers” (Article I, Section 8.)
Our representatives have the power and authority, acting as our representatives, to do whatever we the people deem necessary to provide for the general welfare. You have the right to work for representatives who oppose providing for the general welfare or who propose doing so in ways in which you approve, just as I have the right to work for representatives who will provide for the general welfare in ways I approve. But the argument that Congress constitutionally lacks the power to provide for the general welfare and to make laws carrying out that power simply is direct contradiction of the Constitution itself. I don’t need to amend it; Congress already has the constitutional power to provide of the general welfare and to make laws to that end. It was written into the document by the original writers of the Constitution and ratified by the several states of the federal union.
It is indeed true that there are checks and balances built into the Constitution. There are two Houses of the Congress, elected by different constituencies and with different terms of service. Laws must pass both. There is an Executive, independent of the Congress, required “to execute faithfully” those laws, but with the power to veto those laws which the President deems unwise and/or unconstitutional. There is a Judiciary, independent of both the Congress and the Executive, which (although it is nowhere explicitly given the power in the Constitution) has taken upon itself the power of judicial review–the power to determine if the Congress or the President have exceeded the limits of the Constitution. These are the “checks and balances” of which you speak, along with the power of we the people to decline to reelect our Congressman every two years, our President every four years and our Senators every six years. It is you who needs to amend the Constitution to change our form of government, not I.
[Edited by Elf]
Re # 13,
Ken,
[blockquote]we can have an Army, Navy and Air Force[/blockquote]
Ooops. The Army and Navy are OK. They are explicitly mentioned. The Air Force has to go though. The founders forgot to include that one.
People who have this bizarre desire to return the United States politically to the 18th century are I believe largely living in a fantasy world with little bearing on reality, either the reality of the modern world or that of the 18th century they seem to idolize.
[Please raise the level on this thread, commenting has improved recently and backsliding will not be accepted – Elf]
Ken, I would simply offer the following:
[blockquote] Taken from http://www.answers.com/topic/taxing-and-spending-clause
General Welfare Clause
“ to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; â€
Of all the limitations upon the power to tax and spend, the General Welfare clause appears to have achieved notoriety as the most contentious. The dispute over the clause arises from two distinct disagreements. The first concerns whether the General Welfare Clause grants an independent spending power or is a restiction upon the taxing power. The second disagreement pertains to what exactly is meant by the phrase “general welfare.”
The two primary authors of the Federalist Papers essays set forth two separate, conflicting theories:
* the narrower view of James Madison that spending must be at least tangentially tied to one of the other specifically enumerated powers, such as regulating interstate or foreign commerce, or providing for the military, as the General Welfare Clause is not a specific grant of power, but a statement of purpose qualifying the power to tax;[16][17] and
* the broader view of Alexander Hamilton that spending is an enumerated power that Congress may exercise independently to benefit the general welfare, such as to assist national needs in agriculture or education, provided that the spending is general in nature and does not favor any specific section of the country over any other.[18]
Associate Justice Joseph Story
Though the Federalist Papers were not reliably distributed outside of New York,[19] the essays eventually became the dominant reference for interpreting the meaning of the Constitution as they provided the reasoning and justification behind the Framers’ intent in setting up the federal government.[19]
While Hamilton’s view prevailed during the administrations of Presidents Washington and Adams, historians commonly believe that his view of the General Welfare Clause was repudiated in the election of 1800, and helped establish the primacy of the Democratic-Republican Party for the subsequent 24 years.[20] This belief is based on the motivating factor which the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions played upon the electorate; the Kentucky Resolutions, authored by Thomas Jefferson, specifically criticized Hamilton’s view. Further, Jefferson himself later described the distinction between the parties over this view was “almost the only landmark which now divides the federalists from the republicans….”[21]
Associate Justice Joseph Story relied heavily upon the Federalist Papers as a source for his Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States. In that work, Story excoriated both the Madisonian view and a previous, strongly nationalistic view of Hamilton’s which was put forward at the Philadelphia Convention. Ultimately, however, Story opined the broader spending view of Hamilton, as described above, was the correct construction.
Prior to 1936, the United States Supreme Court had imposed a narrow interpretation on the Clause, as demonstrated by the holding in Bailey v. Drexel Furniture Co.,[13] in which a tax on child labor was an impermissible attempt to regulate commerce beyond that Court’s equally narrow interpretation of the Commerce Clause.
This narrow view was later overturned in United States v. Butler. There, the Court agreed with Justice Story’s construction, holding the power to tax and spend is an independent power; that is, the General Welfare Clause gives Congress power it might not derive anywhere else. However, the Court did limit the power to spending for matters affecting only the national welfare. The Court wrote:
“ [T]he [General Welfare] clause confers a power separate and distinct from those later enumerated, is not restricted in meaning by the grant of them, and Congress consequently has a substantive power to tax and to appropriate, limited only by the requirement that it shall be exercised to provide for the general welfare of the United States. … It results that the power of Congress to authorize expenditure of public moneys for public purposes is not limited by the direct grants of legislative power found in the Constitution. … But the adoption of the broader construction leaves the power to spend subject to limitations. … [T]he powers of taxation and appropriation extend only to matters of national, as distinguished from local, welfare. â€
The tax imposed in Butler was nevertheless held unconstitutional as a violation of the Tenth Amendment reservation of power to the states.
Shortly after Butler, in Helvering v. Davis,[22] the Supreme Court interpreted the clause even more expansively, conferring upon Congress a plenary power to impose taxes and to spend money for the general welfare subject almost entirely to its own discretion. Even more recently, the Court has included the power to indirectly coerce the states into adopting national standards by threatening to withhold federal funds in South Dakota v. Dole.[15]
To date, the Hamiltonian view of the General Welfare Clause predominates in case law. Historically, however, the Anti-Federalists were wary of such an interpretation of this power during the ratification debates in the 1780s.[23][24] Due to the objections raised by the Anti-Federalists, Madison was prompted to author his contributions to the Federalist Papers, attempting to quell the Anti-Federalists’ fears of any such abuse by the proposed national government and to counter Anti-Federalist arguments against the Constitution.[16][25]
Proponents of the Madisonian view also squarely point to the extensive absence of Hamilton[26] from the Constitutional Convention, particularly during the time frame in which this clause was crafted[27] as further evidence of his lack of constructive authority.[/blockquote]
Our disagreement goes back to the drafting of the Constitution and the foundational disagreements as to the powers the federal government was to wield. You want the government to have more power and I want it to have less. And while the current state of the law supports your position many of us find it quite dangerous and destructive of the liberty procured to us through the Revolution. Governments tend to acquire power, not give it up and power acquired by government is always at the expense of the states and/or the people.
Br. Michael, you now appear to recognize that there have, in point of fact, differing interpretations of Art. I, Section 8, of the U. S. Constitution among even those who were present at the Constitutional Convention. (An interesting note is that Jefferson was [b]not[/b] present at the Convention, having been (conveniently according to many historians) sent as ambassador to France that year. And, as your quote indicates, even Jefferson recognized that there was a legitimate disagreement between “republicans” and “democrats” on the question.)
And, as your quote also indicates, the U. S. Supreme Court has ruled on all sides of the question. That court has not been consistently “strict constructionist” (Jefferson’s “republican”) or “broad constructionist” (Jefferson’s “federalists”).
As has been pointed out to you, there is much which the federal government has done over the past 221 years since it was ratified which rely upon a broad, federalist, interpretation. Such things include the creation of national parks, the acquisition of territory by purchase and by military conquest to such things as radio frequencies and space exploration which were not imagined by the framers of the Constitution.
The U. S. Constitution was drafted and ratified because in the decade between independence and the convening of the Convention in 1787, it was realized that confederacy would not work. And the specifics of Article I, Section 8, specifically addressed deficiencies in the Articles of Confederation which had become painfully obvious (e.g., taxes and duties levied on commerce between the states and thirteen different currencies of dubious value). It really does strain credulity that those men gathered in Philadelphia could have ever foreseen what might transpire on the North American continent, much less in the world, and could have enumerated the federal role in every contingency that has arisen.
And whether or not the “republicans” like it or not, there was a constitutional crisis in 1861 which resulted in a major change in the relationship between the federal government and the several states. And it should be noted that the [b]Republican[/b] Party was founded in that crisis and was strongly federalist during the conflict and for considerable time afterwards.
The reality is that if you really want to have a “federal” government constrained by the specific enumerations (excluding the broader language of Article I, Section 8) then it is you that needs to get a Constitutional Amendment to that effect. But that will simply mean a sweeping reconstitution of the federal government to exclude national parks, the Center for Disease Control, the Food and Drug Administration, the Federal Communications Commission, numerous departments of the federal government, cancellation of Social Security and Medicare, elimination of Medicaid, etc. It is not clear what impact your radical second American Revolution would have on civil rights (does the 14th amendment actually protect the rights of citizens and persons, and is “persons” a broader category than “citizens”, etc.), or on the powers of state government (do states have the power to establish a state church or prohibit some religions, to limit free speech, to prohibit the ownership of firearms, engage in warrantless searches and seizures, deny jury trials, habeas corpus, etc.). Are we to return to the times of the 17th century when Senators and Presidential Electors were elected by state legislatures? When blacks were denied the vote? When slavery was legal?
I suspect that you could not get sufficient state legislatures to ratify your second American Revolutions. I also suspect that if somehow you were to achieve the goals of that revolution there would be rioting in our cities and even another civil war, this time not by the states, but by an outraged citizenry.
Ken, just the opposite could have been said until the late 1930s when the Court ruled your way. The Supreme Court did away with the need for an amendment on the “general welfare” question by an expansive ruling. It could go the other way in the future.
I consider that, in many cases the Court functions as a sitting constitutional convention. And much of your argument dispenses with the need for a Constitution at all. After all the UK does not have a written Constitution. It is what Parliament says it is. And your comments that in wanting to restore a federal government of truly limited powers, I or others want to return to slavery does not follow. I do think that direct election of Senators and Electors was an error, but at least that was done by amendment.
I acknowledge that the restoration of limited federal government through the amendment process is impossible as a practical matter and that those who want ever increased expansion of the federal government are in firm control.
Ken Peck seems to make the argument that “since things haven’t gone the way of constructionists they should just stop trying.”
I like what Michael has said: “I acknowledge that . . . those who want ever increased expansion of the federal government are in firm control.”
Present tense, present tense. One person at a time. ; > )
[blockquote]Ken, just the opposite could have been said until the late 1930s when the Court ruled your way.[/blockquote]
As the quote you provided earlier indicated, the court has reversed itself repeatedly (even in the 19th century) in terms of the whether the enumeration in Article I, Section 8, is prescriptive (narrow interpretation) or descriptive (broad interpretation). In the 19th century Congress did all sorts of things not enumerated–I’ve mentioned several–and was not overruled.
Certainly the federal constitution prior to the Reconstruction Amendments conceived a federal constitution which left slavery up to the states. Equally certain is the fact that many states essentially rendered parts of the federal constitution null and void, rendering the former slaves and their descendants in a condition not much better than slavery–and in some respects worse, as most slave owners regarded their slaves as worth some care. And this clear violation of provisions of the Constitution wasn’t remedied until after World War II.
I, for one, do not wish to return to the courts of the 30’s which held that corporations were “persons” and “people” (particularly if they were of color) were not, essentially vacating the intention of the 14th Amendment.
Nor do I wish to return to the late 19th century with its sweat shops, child labor, monopolies, trusts and the like. For a variety of reasons, states were incapable of dealing with such. And they are even less capable of dealing with the giant multinationals of today; even a strong, central, federal government has a problem with that one.
One of the uncomfortable facts is that government intervention tends to help businesses; and it helps people. Historically, of course, I understand the resentment that some states had toward the federal government. They resented being forced to treat all citizens in their states fairly.
It is because there is a checks and balances of some kind that saying that government is “evil” makes little sense. It may be slow; sometimes corrupt. But it provides a balance against other institutions that would sacrifice the common good for their own profit. Government interference often helps small business in way that are not always counted.
I’m trying to imagine what it would be like if the Government hadn’t invested in trains; or forced (yes, they forced them against their will) all the different patent holders involved in early aviation engineering to collaborate; or invested in roads. Or if government hadn’t invested in a peaceful europe; or public schools; state universities; the internet; NASA. He overlooks that the government heavily subsidizes all sorts of corporations – the market – through building things we hope we’ll never use through the military.
But I’m all for cutting back government; but the anti-government reaction seems like we’ve been living in Stalinist Russia since FDR.