Again, where is it stated in the Constitution that every single person has to buy a commercial product, from a for profit corporation, simply as a condition of being alive and a citizen of this country? Where is the Constitutional justification for that?

the government does have the right to promulgate this type of legislation under the powers granted it in the Commerce Clause.

Because frankly I'm not seeing it. Most legal scholars are pointing to Commerce Clause, and the Necessary and Proper Clause, stating that the Constitution empowers the government to regulate interstate trade. But regulation is much different from legally forcing a person to buy a product from a for profit company.

If this law is upheld from the court, it would set a devastating precedent. What other products will we be forced to buy simply as a condition of being a US citizen? Do you really want to go down that slippery slope?

of legal opinions by well-respected scholars I can't help you. As for regulation legally requiring a person to buy a product from a for-profit company, let's try Auto liability insurance. Or is that also unconstitutional in your legal opinion?

law to buy, before anyone can do this or that.

Here is the difference, if you don't want to buy auto insurance, you have the option of not driving.

If you don't want to buy health insurance, then what is your other option? Dying?

It is the decision those who can't afford it are making everyday.

right? Which will increase pressure for Single Payer, right? I wonder how long that will take to bear fruit. Say, 5 years until there's enough EFFECTIVE grassroots political pressure to make Single Payer happen - BUT - we have some more congressional elections and another presidential election, before we achieve that focused critical mass amongst the grassroots (however long that takes), so the Single Payer goal gets derailed again politically by Citizens' United, right? Fuck what the people actually want.

These are the reasons that I am willing to consider the mandate. That and at least for the time being mandated COMPARISON shopping in the insurance exchanges, along with ACA traits such as the prohibition against pre-existing conditions; keeping dependent children on family policies until (was it?) age 26; the 85% MLR; and as yet un-developed perks like the Patient Centered Outcomes Research Institute (all just for starters, because I'm sure there are other pluses to ACA itself, ir-respective of the mandate), along with (HR 676) pressure to review and reform Medicare to make it more efficient and patient-centered . . . all of that is creating more awareness amongst mandated customers about just how much they are being ripped off. They are becoming more aware, because, by law, they are REQUIRED to become more aware in order to buy insurance. That awareness is supposed to create pressure in the market place, which, if insurance companies can't meet the demands arising from that awareness, their prices are going to go up and eventually many will be out of business. The mandate creates that pressure.

I just think there is a bet here that this whole process is going to create more demand for more Medicare-like health insurance. Enter, at minimum, HR 676, Expanded and Improved Medicare for All http://www.pnhp.org/ Another reason I am interested in this is because I know from first hand work that MANY health care providers and students are interested in HR 676. I hypothesize that they are looking for NEW BUSINESS MODELS and will get them in the quickest way available to them. Some of these professionals are all out Single Payer advocates; others want a more controlled transition that goes there if all else fails.

States have a plenary police power not subject to the constitutional constraints imposed on congress.

Not the federal government.

Amendment X

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.

Which impulse do they follow? Please their corporate masters and uphold Obamacare, or give in to their anti-Obama side and reject it. Decisions, decisions. I don't care what their reason is for striking it down however, just that they strike it down. It would set a horrible precedent.

Common sense, no, they may not have it, but lots of people outside the court do have common sense, good liberals all, and see Obamacare as the pro-corporate abomination it is.

We can go back to the judges Raygun appointed in the 80s...including Big Tony...and the long-term right wing push to put their judges on benches across the federal judiciary.

The problem is for decades the right wing has screamed about "activist judges" that the word has become synomomous with "librul"...a distortion but one that lives mightly in the corporate media. They're all corporate tools and thus if you bring up that Judge A is too radical, they'll always counter it with Judge B being too "librul".

The good takeaway from any repeal of provisions or the entire AHCA is that it puts pressure on the rushpublicans to say what they'll replace it with. This is where the Democrats should focus...on how the rushpublicans work on behalf of the corporates. Despite all their efforts to try to paint Bain and other corporates as "good" the public sentiment is otherwise.

(R) tended to mean judges that found rights that required the government to do something or which allowed judges to do things the government wanted. This didn't just allow increased government authority, it required that the government expand authority to implement the court's order.

A standard example from the '70s was, I think, Poughkeepsie NY (IIRC) where a judge found that the city was unconstitutionally underfunding the school system and said, basically, "Raise taxes."

(D) have tended to mean judges that struck down laws. Revisionist history has Roosevelt fighting "activist" judges that unvalidated laws and didn't find ways to allow for him to have more authority.

I have to say "tended" because there's no such thing as "Democratic" or "Republican" opinion: There are platforms that vary by election and candidate, there are pundits and there are politicians, but getting either group to have a single opinion on almost anything is well night impossible. (Unless we allow that single opinion to define the group boundaries: So yesterday I read a post that tried to say if somebody said X they couldn't be a Democrat, because all Democrats would reject X. That's less a True Scotsman fallacy and more of a definition.)


In the last 10 years or so the tendencies have gotten a bit smeared as more (D) are conservative, in that they want to preserve the status quo against changes, and more (R) are liberal in the sense that they want to revamp things. (Even these are tendencies and not absolute traits: Conservatives have always seen things they wanted to radically change, and liberals have always found thingst hey wanted to retain or revert to.)

and nothing will happen.

that it is impossible, nor do we even want to try, to write perfect laws for everything.

Ergo, we MUST rely on human factors.

The only remedy for the biases this inevitably introduces is for a more fully informed constantly active and engaged constituency SEPARATE from candidates and politicians:

Accessible information that specifically rates the Judicial branch on collectively established standards, so that people can act for themselves and interact knowledgeably with others.