[paraclete]

Tom, all you are doing is proving the point, which has little to do with party politics and a great deal to do with the failure of your constitution to live up to the promise of protecting the people. What it actually does is protect entrenched power.
You say Obama has usurped power and implemented something which advantages only the insurance companies. In reality the insurance companies have taken the opportunity to gouge the population because the constitution was never intended to protect against misuse of market power. Such a thing wasn't even contemplated in the eighteenth century and this tells us that eighteenth century thinking is not going to get the job done.
Tal you surely don't think the masses are satisfied, given the number of people who live on welfare

[talaniman]

The constitution gives the congress the power to regulate trade and commerce. Now whether the congress acts and how is an entirely different issue. And no Clete, the masses are not satisfied at all.

[tomder55]

and yet SCOTUS rejected the emperor's defense of Obamacare under the commerce clause of the constitution. Roberts twisted the pretzel to justify it under the taxing authority .
Here is Roberts opinion re: the commerce clause ....

Construing the Commerce Clause to permit Congress to regulate individuals precisely because they are doing nothing would open a new and potentially vast domain to congressional authority. Congress already possesses expansive power to regulate what people do. Upholding the Affordable Care Act under the Commerce Clause would give Congress the same license to regulate what people do not do. The Framers knew the difference between doing something and doing nothing. They gave Congress the power to regulate commerce, not to compel it. Ignoring that distinction would undermine the principle that the Federal Government is a government of limited and enumerated powers. The individual mandate thus cannot be sustained under Congress’s power to “regulate Commerce.”

[Tuttyd]

" What the left is very good at doing is accusing others for doing what they are doing. I submit that it is the party that claims they are for the little people that demonstrate the elitism that you say I champion".

In exactly the same way you could submit that big business pretends to promote a conservative agenda. Is this what you mean Tom?

[paraclete]

The commerce clause could be used to regulate pricing and access to the market but not mandate participation. Certainly a correct decision which will no doubt be used as precident in the future. Why mandatory participation was not struck down isn't clear, however the penalties are a form of taxation, fines are used to mandate compliance in many instances.

Tom unfortunately holds the view that the market provides the perfect vehicle to regulate human behaviour, but we know the market is manipulated and human behaviour will always gravitate towards the least cost option. What has been done here is to limit the options and that is a valid government action, even if it has been imperfectly implemented

[Tuttyd]

Yes, and consumers gravitate to the lowest prices. A large chain store opened up in out own a year or so ago, in the middle of the main street It sold a large variety of goods. Many of the goods sold were the same as those sold by small business close by.

Electrical appliances were sold at reduced price, as was over the counter pharmacy products. Some small business (at least three) went out of business. Others are still struggling to stay afloat.

[paraclete]

It becomes increasingly interesting to watch what happens when big business comes to town. A few years ago we had one hardware chain then another built out of town in a new development, this was followed by redevelopment of a franchise store closer to town and now another large chain is developing even further out of town whilst a small local store still thrives. We had one electrical appliance store, now we have three. What has disappeared is a large department store. I have observed that small speciality stores are disappearing, but these arn't selling the same products.

We pay much less for products today the result of the development of China but the price of services increases, all of this indicates that the market operates well when there is plenty of competition but this doesn't necessarily mean growth in local employment. Getting back to the subject, the ACA would have been better implemented by fully opening the market and giving incentives for participation, not penalties.

[talaniman]

That's what the tax subsidies are.

[paraclete]

yes the government givith and the government taketh away, I understood there are certain incentives for lower income

[talaniman]

http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R41137.pdf

As you see a family of 4 can make $92,400 and be eligible for a tax credit subsidy that's applied immediately to your first premium payment.

[paraclete]

Ok so there is a threshold and the level is higher than poverty level, So the question is, who gets the advantage; the families or the insurers? You see Tal I didn't think the problem is for the middle class but for low income people

[talaniman]

Only in states that have chosen not to expand the Medicaid coverage Clete, do we find a lot of scrambling around to cover lower and no income people. Exclusively it seems in republican controlled states. There are 25 of them, including the one I am in. They will be on board eventually once they look at the drains on their local and state budgets and the hospitals scream foul for absorbing the costs of uninsured people.

Medicaid

Although Medicaid is generally beyond the scope of this report, ACA's Medicaid expansion
provisions have the potential for affecting eligibility for premium credits if certain low to middle
income individuals and families seek health insurance through the exchanges. Under ACA, states
have the option to expand Medicaid eligibility to include all non-elderly, non-pregnant
individuals (i.e., childless adults and certain parents, except for those ineligible based on certain
noncitizenship status) with income up to 133% FPL.27 (ACA does not change noncitizens'
eligibility for Medicaid.28) States that choose to implement the ACA Medicaid expansion will
receive substantial federal subsidies. If a person who applied for premium credits in an exchange
is determined to be eligible for Medicaid, the exchange must have them enrolled in Medicaid.29
Therefore, any state that expands Medicaid eligibility to include persons with income at or above
100% FPL (or any state that currently includes such individuals) would make such individuals
ineligible for premium credits.24

Really poor people would pay nothing. Neither would the state. It should be noted that states that refuse to expand have their Federal funding frozen at 2009 levels, leaving many poor and lower income people uninsured.

[tomder55]

those will be the states the lefties call on to bail out the other states when the Feds cut the funding they provide to the states ,and the states find out they are left with another Federal budget buster to finance on their own.

[talaniman]

What's the other budget buster the states have to finance on their own?

[tomder55]

There's plenty although Medicaid has always been the big fish. Many of them are unfunded mandates .
The EPA has plenty of them . Municipalities get rocked by them all the time . NCLB has them also. )see 'School District of Pontiac, Michigan v. Duncan' where SCOTUS decided insufficient federal funds were not a valid reason to not comply with a federal mandate.

[talaniman]

How about links instead of broad vague inaccurate assertions?

[paraclete]

It's ok Tal we too understand the concept of unfunded community service obligations

[tomder55]

I'll give you an easy one. REAL ID is a mandate to standardize licenses that the Fed Gvt forced on the states that the states have to pick up the tab on. There are so many of them and Medicaid is the mother of them all . That's why SCOTUS decided that mandatory participation was unconstitutional .Medicaid spending doubled over the last decade before the Obamacare expansion , and for many states it consumes the first or second biggest share of state expenditures, threatening education, public safety, and transportation programs.

[paraclete]

Tom Medicaid isn't unfunded. You are assuming the federal government will change the funding arrangements and leave the states with the bill. It is much easier if these programs are centralised in funding and rollout, just as it is much easier to have a single payer solution and a uniform set of entitlement rules.

Your structures add extra complexity and extra cost in just about everything. Bureaucracy for the sake of bureaucracy. Having the states involved doesn't make it more efficient or from recent event more effective

[tomder55]

You are assuming the federal government will change the funding arrangements and leave the states with the bill.

I'll guarantee it .