Comments on: There is no “National” Health Care System

By: Garrett

Garrett — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 22:29:43 +0000

Michael, let's be reasonable and set the record straight. I never conceded that I am in agreement with the bill before Congress at the moment. I am also not disagreeing that these regulations are extremely sweeping and should be properly implemented with an Amendment. However what I find a problem with is you and the rest of the constitutionalists here are grazing over is the actual problem at hand. You're welcome to feel one way or another on a particular national poilicy/system/whathaveyou, but all Terry and others have ventured to do is slam me for my own opinions on the matter at hand.

I won't get into my opinions on the Constitution, but needless to say I exercise my 1st, 2nd, and 5th Amendment rights to their fullest extent. I carry around a copy of it in my car and hand it out when I feel it's warranted. I have plenty of ideas for things that we should fix with our current healthcare system, but when it comes down to putting those down on paper in the form of an Amendment, I will leave that up to those on Capitol Hill. Unless, of course, you're feeling ambitious enough to tackle that one.

As to the detail regarding my experiences. I've lived in both Germany and Canada. Having gotten sick in Canada recently (pneumonia), I can tell you without a shadow of a doubt that my experience with the system was no different than when I have been sick in the States. Right, except for all of the co-pay, insurance payment juggling headaches one deals with stateside. I've spoken with native Canadian and German citizens, and as you may have guessed, they love their healthcare system. They get their cancer treatments, their insulin medications, their emergency surgeries at the wave of a care card. The talk about death tribunals, doctor shortages, inferior care, etc is all smoke in mirrors developed by those with some sort of alternate agenda. And because of that, you have nutjobs like our friend Christian who believe we will descend into chaos and Communism ala the late Soviet Union should we embrace a policy like the one we are discussing.

Obviously I picked the wrong discussion thread to engage a thoughtful dialogue on healthcare alternatives, and for that, I apologize.

By: MichaelBoldin

MichaelBoldin — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 21:12:19 +0000

Bravo, John – short and sweet, and right on the mark!

By: John

John — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 19:18:22 +0000

You bring up a wonderful point, Seth. Most of the cabinet departments are unconstitutional and should be done away with. We need people who have actually read the Constitution and the Federalist papers and understand what the founding fathers were meaning in Congress, in the White House and on the SCOTUS.

By: Seth

Seth — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 05:02:56 +0000

So naturally, the entire HHS, CDC, and FDA are not legal either. Eisenhower was surely an evil tyrant for asserting the blatantly unconstitutional federal intrusion in health administration when he created the first cabinet-level department on health.

For that matter, energy policy isn’t enumerated by the Constitution either. Neither is agriculture. God knows education isn’t. It seems like much of the president’s cabinet and the executive branch has been unconstitutional since at least the middle of the 19th century, when the patently unauthorized departments of agriculture and interior were created. Where in the Constitution are the words “natural resources”?

Or else…maybe this is a fake legalistic argument over a more mundane dispute over policy preferences. Hmm. I can’t tell which.

By: B. Johnson

B. Johnson — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 23:11:37 +0000

As a side note to proposed Obamacare legislation, please consider the following. The main reason that liberal congressmen have made the bill unnecessarily long and unreadable is this, IMO. Corrupt congressmen are abdicating their legislative powers to corrupt liberal justices to legislate public healthcare policy from the bench.

By: Terry Morris

Terry Morris — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 23:09:37 +0000

EZstar, thanks for the thoughtful and lucid comments. Ya know, I can’t possibly get into the depth of this right now, but allow me to say this much –

whenever we consider alterations to our superior form of government (and that is exactly what we’re considering with the full nationalization of healthcare, let’s not kid ourselves) I start to get a little nervous at the outset because I’m quite convinced, with a reasonable degree of certainty, that almost everyone involved hasn’t considered the long-term, far-reaching implications of what they’re vying for, which, as I said above, is the further erosion of correct Republican principles. Which is to say the destruction of federal representative Republicanism.

The main idea I’d like to convey here (without getting into much detail at this point) is that ‘reforming’ (i.e., federalizing) the healthcare system in America has far-reaching, wide-ranging, long-term consequences that virtually no one is talking about. Doing so in violation of the constitution is egregious, no doubt, but doing so at all portends future events that I am by no means comfortable with. It’s not just about this or that issue, y’all, it’s about maintaining the most respectable form of government mankind has yet devised. Not just for you and me, but for posterity’s sake.

By the way, someone above said something about the constitution being “ancient.” I would simply advise the individual who made the statement to look up the term.

By: EZstar

EZstar — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 16:45:34 +0000

@Terry and Garret
Terry, I’m not sure you’re right about all of our government run healthcare programs (which you correctly point out we have our share of in the US). The VA is pretty highly regarded both by bodies like the AMA and by veterans themselves from what I understand. Still, it’s a debatable point, and no-one is arguing that medicare/medicaid are well run or effective programs. And yet I think, depressingly, that you’re right about national healthcare being a question of if rather than when, just as social insurance was in the 1930′s. Back then Roosevelt and company thought “well, the people want it, how can the courts and the constitution stand in their way”, which is not quite what Obama is saying, but is what many of his supporters say. I don’t need to go into how misguided this sentiment is, from browsing other posts I can see this community already understands. Thing is, its still an open question whether or not nationalized healthcare is the way to go from a HEALTH OUTCOMES standpoint. We can argue about it all we want (and let’s do so, thats how we figure this stuff out), but despite what the right says old people aren’t being euthanized in Britain or Canada, and despite what the left says the proportion of the american populace who wants insurance but cannot afford it is really really small, especially with medicare and medicaid. However, as Terry points out, whether or not nationalized healthcare is acceptable, from a CONSTITUTIONAL standpoint, is a lot clearer (see the name of this website). I love how people with little grasp of the way constitutional law works react when something might be good pragmatically but bad constitutionally. You don’t “scrap it outright” like some idiots who will remain nameless suggest, you go through the amendment process, and if 3/4 of american states think its a good idea, it becomes part of the constitution. It’s not like its a novel concept, or even impossible; we’ve already done it about 27 times in our nations history.

By: EZstar

EZstar — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 16:43:53 +0000

@Wayne Barbarek

Thanks, now I have a number of good arguments to add to my arsenal for states rights.

In all seriousness though, I see what you’re getting at. I recognize that trying to compare systems at different levels of sovereignty can be misleading. However I think you take your point too far; after all, no 2 situations are perfectly comparable unless they are exactly the same in all respects other than the one compared. That’s why economists are so big on that whole ceteris paribus thing. But when we’re trying to answer a question like “is national healthcare more effective than state run or private” (notice I did not mention the constitutionality, just the health efficacy) it becomes useful, or maybe even necessary, to compare as best we can. There is useful information to be had by analyzing health indicators like life expectancy in the United States as a whole, then comparing it to the life expectancies in countries with national healthcare. Certainly there are confounding factors; the USA has a lower life expectancy partly because we are more likely to die in random accidents, which has nothing to do with our healthcare system. But the comparison is still useful. There’s an extremely important difference between saying “We may have slightly worse outcomes but I’d prefer to adhere to the constitution because its damn important to me” and “Who knows if we have worse outcomes? Since we can’t answer that, we better just adhere to the constitution, because its damn important to me”. One is a defensible moral statement, the other is essentially sticking your fingers in your ears and saying lalala I can’t hear you. Besides, there are issues here besides constitutional ones. It turns out the incentive structures I brought up are ALMOST exactly the same when states are paying the bills and deciding who gets covered as when its done by the federal government. Again, this might be less important than arguing about the constitutionality of a federal system, but you at least should acknowledge its existence.

By: Terry Morris

Terry Morris — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 12:28:14 +0000

Touche’, Michael. I’d even be willing to help ol’ Garrett out by suggesting that the final provision in the proposed amendment read something along the lines of the following:

Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

I.e., a new power relinquished by the states to the federal Congress.

Of course, I and others like me would demand that this amendment proposal follow to the letter the constitutional prescription in Article V for amending the constitution. I wouldn’t have to agree with it in any event since, as with other examples we have on record, such an amendment to the federal constitution would further tend to erode the principles of federal representative Republicanism. But such an approach to the subject would at least bear some resemblance to respect for the written constitution and the provisions it incorporates for its alteration.

By: Michael Boldin

Michael Boldin — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 11:26:34 +0000

Actually, Garrett – instead of continuing to promote how national health care is good (even though Europe doesn’t even have something as expansive as what’s being proposed), why don’t you give us what you started out with……something Constitutional.

That’s what should be discussed for every issue!

So, if there were to be a Constitutional Amendment to support health care, how should it be written? That would at least show that you’ve taken the time to review the constitution and understand how Amendments are written and worded – and how this particular one would need to modify the constitution to make it legal.