Well, Dr. Douglass stated you could opt out of the mandated health care since there was nothing in writing within the pages forcing a person to do it. Since then we've seen that the IRS would simply garnish your wages for not paying. After researching many, many articles about what happened, the best summary we could find was with Joel Skousen's World Affairs Brief, Friday, June 29, 2012. You can click on this weblink and request a free copy of the entire summary: editor@worldaffairsbrief.com
World Affairs Brief, June 29, 2012 Commentary and Insights on a Troubled World. Copyright Joel Skousen. Partial quotations with attribution permitted. Cite source as Joel Skousen's World Affairs Brief--[his added comments are within brackets](http://www.worldaffairsbrief.com)
THIS WEEK’S ANALYSIS:
Justice Roberts Betrays Conservatives on Obamacare
Supremes Strike Down Arizona Immigration Law
Rash of Dire Economic Collapse Predictions
Romney’s Neocon Retreat
Russia Betrays Assad
AG Holder Held in Contempt by House
JUSTICE ROBERTS BETRAYS CONSERVATIVES ON OBAMACARE
"Constitutional conservatives were devastated by Thursday’s ruling by the Supreme Court upholding Obamacare—the most draconian and expensive power grab since “The Great Society” legislation of the 1960s. Most analysts predicted Justice Kennedy would be the most likely swing vote on the court, but instead it was Chief Justice John Roberts that betrayed the conservative view of the constitution.
"Roberts was clearly setting out to find a way to make this huge federal power grab constitutional even though he admitted the individual mandate would not pass constitutional muster. Roberts correctly wrote, “The individual mandate cannot be upheld as an exercise of Congress’s power under the Commerce Clause. That Clause authorizes Congress to regulate interstate commerce, not to order individuals to engage in it,” and yet he found another novel way to view the mandate so as to evade declaring it unconstitutional.
"Even though the Act clearly called the new tax imposed on non participants a “penalty” Roberts chose to disregard the wordage and held that the law was a valid exercise of Congress’s power to tax. Roberts re-framed the debate over health care as a debate over increasing taxes. Congress, he said, is increasing taxes on those who choose to go uninsured. But this is a direct violation of Art 1, Section 9: No Capitation, or other direct, Tax shall be laid, unless in Proportion to the Census or Enumeration herein before directed to be taken.
"Roberts said, “The Affordable Care Act is constitutional in part and unconstitutional in part.” But instead of finding the law unconstitutional based upon the mandate, he simply redefined the mandate as a tax so he could rule it legal. It was the worst kind of legal sophistry.
"Roberts continued “it is reasonable to construe what Congress has done as increasing taxes on those who have a certain amount of income, but (who) choose to go without health insurance. Such legislation is within Congress’s power to tax.” Income level has nothing to do with it, and it certainly isn’t reasonable or proper to increase taxes on those who choose to exercise their liberty by not buying an insurance product.
"The law, Roberts wrote, “makes going without insurance just another thing the Government taxes, like buying gasoline or earning income. And if the mandate is in effect just a tax hike on certain taxpayers who do not have health insurance, it may be within Congress’s constitutional power to tax.” It isn’t “just like” buying something. For the first time in history, Roberts is justifying the taxing of something NOT bought. There is no precedent for this in law or history.
"As further proof that Roberts is a deeply compromised justice, shilling for government, he said “The question is not whether that is the most natural interpretation of the mandate, but only whether it is a ‘fairly possible’ one.” Yes, that was really stretching the law, but then he flat out admitted that he felt it his duty was to try to salvage anything Congress does. He said the Supreme Court precedent is that “every reasonable construction” of a law passed by Congress “must be resorted to, in order to save a statute from unconstitutionality.” Since when?
"It is the duty of the court to aggressively guard against any law that even hints of unconstitutionality. But Robert’s sophistry seemed to know no end. Roberts had the audacity to claim that “there’s no real compulsion here” since those who do not pay the penalty for not having insurance can’t be sent to jail. Really? Try not paying your taxes and see where you end up. This is a new form of taking that has no limits and certainly constitutes force.
"Roberts must be really proud of himself. Single handedly he pulled a rabbit out of the hat that no lower court had even thought of—saying the mandate functions as a tax, and therefore isn’t a mandate—a position that no lower court accepted. Roberts developed this novel and scurrilous interpretation on his own. He’s clearly no friend of liberty.
"The Dissent: Here are excerpts from the soft dissent of Justices Scalia, Kennedy, Thomas and Alito. Had Roberts not betrayed these four, Obamacare would have gone down to defeat.
“Congress has set out to remedy the problem that the best health care is beyond the reach of many Americans who cannot afford it. It can assuredly do that, by exercising the powers accorded to it under the Constitution [absolutely not. This statement shows that none of these are strict constructionists, but simply think this particular version went too far]. The question in this case, however, is whether the complex structures and provisions of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (Affordable Care Act or ACA) go beyond those powers. We conclude that they do.
"The difficult questions: “The first of those is whether failure to engage in economic activity (the purchase of health insurance) is subject to regulation under the Commerce Clause. Failure to act does result in an effect on commerce, and hence might be said to come under this Court’s ‘affecting commerce’ criterion of Commerce Clause jurisprudence. But in none of its decisions has this Court extended the Clause that far [Right. This latest stretch of the Commerce Clause is without precedent].
“The second question is whether the congressional power to tax and spend, permits the conditioning of a State’s continued receipt of all funds under a massive state-administered federal welfare program upon its acceptance of an expansion to that program. Several of our opinions have suggested that the power to tax and spend cannot be used to coerce state administration of a federal program, but we have never found a law enacted under the spending power to be coercive. Those questions are difficult.
“The case is easy and straightforward, however, in another respect. What is absolutely clear, affirmed by the text of the 1789 Constitution, by the Tenth Amendment ratified in 1791, and by innumerable cases of ours in the 220 years since, is that there are structural limits upon federal power—upon what it can prescribe with respect to private conduct, and upon what it can impose upon the sovereign States. Whatever may be the conceptual limits upon the Commerce Clause and upon the power to tax and spend, they cannot be such as will enable the Federal Government to regulate all private conduct and to compel the States to function as administrators of federal programs.
“That clear principle carries the day here. The striking [I would say horrendous] case of Wickard v. Filburn, (1942), which held that the economic activity of growing wheat, even for one’s own consumption, affected commerce sufficiently that it could be regulated, always has been regarded as the ne plus ultra of expansive Commerce Clause jurisprudence. To go beyond that, and to say the failure to grow wheat (which is not an economic activity, or any activity at all) nonetheless affects commerce and therefore can be federally regulated, is to make mere breathing in and out the basis for federal prescription and to extend federal power to virtually all human activity.”
"This is what I refer to in my legal writings as an “unlimited extension of lawmaking power” and is something that must never be allowed in law. People must be careful not to assent to a law because they think “people should do that for their own good.” Even if that were true, when you give government the power to mandate what is “good for people,” it permits an unlimited entrance of government into every aspect of people’s lives.
"The dissent continues: “As for the constitutional power to tax and spend for the general welfare: The Court has long since expanded that beyond (what Madison thought it meant) taxing and spending for those aspects of the general welfare that were within the Federal Government’s enumerated powers. Thus, we now have sizable federal Departments devoted to subjects not mentioned among Congress’ enumerated powers, and only marginally related to commerce: the Department of Education, the Department of Health and Human Services, the Department of Housing and Urban Development.
“The principal practical obstacle that prevents Congress from using the tax-and-spend power to assume all the general-welfare responsibilities traditionally exercised by the States is the sheer impossibility of managing a Federal Government large enough to administer such a system. That obstacle can be overcome by granting funds to the States, allowing them to administer the program. That is fair and constitutional enough [not at all] when the States freely agree to have their powers employed and their employees enlisted in the federal scheme [it is still an illegal taking of money from citizens for the federal government to force the payment of taxes when there is no constitutional federal purpose for those tax expenditures]. But it is a blatant violation of the constitutional structure when the States have no choice.
“The Act before us here exceeds federal power both in mandating the purchase of health insurance and in denying non consenting States all Medicaid funding. These parts of the Act are central to its design and operation, and all the Act’s other provisions would not have be enacted without them.
"The Individual Mandate: “The Individual Mandate in the Act commands that every ‘applicable individual shall for each month beginning after 2013 ensure that the individual, and any dependent of the individual who is an applicable individual, is covered under minimum essential coverage.’ If this provision ‘regulates’ anything, it is the failure to maintain minimum essential coverage. One might argue that it regulates that failure by requiring it to be accompanied by payment of a penalty. But that failure—that abstention from commerce—is not ‘Commerce.’ To be sure, purchasing insurance is ‘Commerce;’ but one does not regulate commerce that does not exist by compelling its existence.
“The Government presents the Individual Mandate as a unique feature of a complicated regulatory scheme governing many parties with countervailing incentives that must be carefully balanced. Congress has imposed an extensive set of regulations on the health insurance industry, and compliance with those regulations will likely cost the industry a great deal. If the industry does not respond by increasing premiums, it is not likely to survive. And if the industry does increase premiums, then there is a serious risk that its products—insurance plans—will become economically undesirable for many and prohibitively expensive for the rest.
“Here, however, Congress has impressed into service third parties, healthy individuals who could be but are not customers of the relevant industry, to offset the undesirable consequences of the regulation. Congress’ desire to force these individuals to purchase insurance is motivated by the fact that they are further removed from the market than unhealthy individuals with pre-existing conditions, because they are less likely to need extensive care in the near future [or never if they do not want the drug-oriented medical services insurance companies exclusively provide]. If Congress can reach out and command even those furthest removed from an interstate market to participate in the market, then the Commerce Clause becomes a font of unlimited power, [and] the Commerce Clause, even when supplemented by the Necessary and Proper Clause, is not carte blanche for doing whatever will help achieve the ends Congress seeks by the regulation of commerce. [And yet, it has become just that.] “
"Where to from here? The individuals have totally lost their right to not buy insurance without monetary penalty, but States can still opt out of the increased and expensive Medicare provisions without being denied federal Medicare payments.
"As NBC said, “In a major victory for the states who challenged the law, the court said that the Obama administration cannot coerce states to go along with the Medicaid insurance program for low-income people. The financial pressure which the federal government puts on the states in the expansion of Medicaid “is a gun to the head,” Roberts wrote. “A State that opts out of the Affordable Care Act’s expansion in health care coverage thus stands to lose not merely ‘a relatively small percentage’ of its existing Medicaid funding, but all of it,” Roberts said.
“Congress cannot penalize States that choose not to participate in that new program by taking away their existing Medicaid funding,” Roberts said. The Medicaid provision is projected to add nearly 30 million more people to the insurance program for low-income Americans -- but the court’s decision left states free to opt out of the expansion if they choose.”
"However, gone is the right of the states to shield individual state citizens from Obamacare by opting out. They can only opt out of the new increased and expensive provisions of Medicare.
"As for the nation, the only alternative now is to try and repeal Obamacare, or repeal certain portions like the penalty tax. That’s doable for the House of Representatives but probably not in the Senate. Much will depend on whether or not Romney gets elected. Given his damaging compromise on the individual mandate in Massachusetts, it is far from certain if he will be able to repeal the mandate and its associated tax.
"As the LA Times noted, Romney will ride the repeal effort to its maximum effect: “The Supreme Court’s decision to uphold the individual mandate central to President Obama’s health care law carried immediate benefits for Mitt Romney, namely a newly energized Republican electorate and the ability to keep hammering his promise to repeal the law on ‘Day One.’ [That’s the easy part. He still has to get Congress to go along.]
“This is the time of choice for the American people,” the presumptive nominee said during an appearance in Washington D.C. on Thursday. “If you don't want the course that President Obama has put us on, if you want instead a course that the Founders envisioned, then join me in this effort. Help us. Help us defeat Obamacare.”
“But the Supreme Court’s decision also was a reminder of what Romney’s campaign would like Republican voters to forget — that he too embraced an individual mandate in his efforts to win universal healthcare for his state as governor of Massachusetts. The law that was once considered Romney’s signature achievement is one that he now rarely mentions.”
"The Republican Governor’s conference is pinning their hopes on Romney too. As the Washington examiner said, “Republican governors are planning to ignore the Supreme Court's decision Thursday to uphold Obamacare hoping that the issue will drive voters to dump President Obama in favor of Mitt Romney who has vowed to kill the Affordable Care Act. After the decision, the Republican Governors Association said that nothing should be done by the states until after the election, a clear signal that they believe a GOP president, House and Senate will kill the health care reform pushed through by Democrats and opposed by Republicans.”
"I personally think that, if elected, Romney will fail to repeal Obamacare. This is another of those causes so dear to the PTB that they won’t take no for an answer. That’s why they got Roberts to switch sides and write this deplorable court ruling.
"One thing is for sure: Obamacare will turn into the largest future deficit driver in history. Nothing will be solved in the health care industry and the benefit mentality of free health care will march forward inexorably adding to the total government control scheme."
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