Posts Tagged ‘individual mandate’

Dr. David Janda

Blair House Summit: Obama’s Moses Moment…Not so much!

by Dr. David Janda

Last Thursday, February 25th, the Obama Administration staged a ‘Health Care Summit’ at Blair House. It was to be the President’s President “Moses Moment,” when e would part the seas and bring the Republicans, Democrats and Our country together and get everyone on board his “much maligned” Federally Run Health Care Program. (ObamaCare 2.0). His approach would be to “Listen,” particularly to The Republicans and Independents, and then part the Seas of Conflict and pass through to the Promised Land of a compromise. Well, it was over, finally over, after 7 hours of heavy winds. The event showed Obama less like a Moses parting the Red Sea, and more like a deadly tsunami poised to wreak havoc on American shores.

Obama Health Care Overhaul

On his walk from The White House to The Blair House earlier in the morning, Mr. Obama declared he was going “to listen.” He listened, but not so much. When the meeting was over it turned out that his soliloquy lasted over 122 minutes, The Democrats spoke 135 minutes, and The Republicans were “allowed” to speak for 111 minutes (30% of the entire meeting). So it is official, he is not The Listener in Chief. When asked about his lack of listening ability and his penchant for wanting to listen to his own voice, Mr. Obama responded, “I don’t count my time because I am…The President.” This is the official 2010 version of “Let Them Eat Cake.”

Unfortunately for Mr. Obama, the week’s health care rollout did not start off well, when on Monday he posted a new ObamaCare 2.0 on The White House website. This Plan was eerily similar to a “worst of” compilation of excerpts from the House and Senate Health Care Plans. This Plan did not have any input from Republicans or Independents. Isn’t it odd that ObamaCare 2.0 was posted on the site — without a Press Conference? This Administration has a Press Conference when he sneezes, but no such fanfare for what the Administration claims is the most important domestic issue. The teleprompter must have developed Swine Flu, or maybe Mr. Obama held off on the press event because he would have to answer questions on HIS health care plan from that pesky press.

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Rep. John Boehner

Freedom is a Right, and Any Health Care Bill That Takes Away Americans’ Freedom is Wrong

by Rep. John Boehner (R-OH)

After the conclusion of yesterday’s nationally-televised health care “summit” hosted by President Obama, in a video for YouTube’s Citizen Tube I answered five health care questions submitted and voted on by the You Tube community.  The questions posed on You Tube are the same questions and concerns I hear from Americans across the country.  They want to us scrap the current bill and start over with common-sense, step-by-step measures that lower health care costs.  And they want to know why Congress insists on passing massive bills that no one in America has time to read or understand.  My Republican colleagues and I agree a different approach is needed – not just to health care reform, but to the way Congress works on every issue.

In the video, I respond to citizens’ questions about health care reform.  On one question, for example, about whether I believe that health care is a right, I said that, “I believe that freedom is a right, and that any health care bill that takes away Americans’ freedom is wrong.” I also answered questions about my support for health care reforms aimed at lowering Americans’ health care costs, such as medical liability reform and allowing Americans to purchase health insurance across state lines, and pledged I will insist on smaller, simpler bills and implement a mandatory 72-hour online reading period for all bills if Republicans are entrusted with the majority.

Over the past year, Republicans have used new media tools to interact directly with the American people.  Whether on Twitter, where House Republicans outnumber their Democratic counterparts two-to-one, or YouTube, where eight of the top 10 most-viewed and most-subscribed YouTube channels in Congress are from the GOP, House Republicans are listening to and learning from the American people.  Below is full text of my answers to You Tube:

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Brian Garst

Health Care Freedom Act Featured at CPAC

by Brian Garst

The Conservative Political Action Conference isn’t all fiery speeches and political red meat.  Following the rousing speech by Rep. Mike Pence on Friday, a much more subdued presentation by Dr. Eric Novack described the efforts of states to pass a version of the Health Care Freedom Act, which I previously discussed here.  Much has happened since I last talked about the efforts of states to protect individual health care rights.

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The number of states advancing legislation to protect individual choice from federal mandates has increased since December from 24 states to 35.  But merely introducing legislation isn’t enough; we need victories.

Virginia delivered a first step toward just that, as its state House recently passed a version of the Health Care Freedom Act. Elsewhere, the Tennessee Senate passed the bill 26-1, while other states, such as Idaho, have successfully advanced the bill out of committee.

These bills offer to protect citizens in two crucial ways. First, they would guarantee the right to purchase care directly, so that bureaucrats cannot be forced between patients and doctors against their will. Second, it would assure that citizens are protected from unconstitutional mandates to purchase insurance by allowing them to opt-out from any such federal program.

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Patrick Courrielche

Mandated Health Insurance – Candidate Obama Attacks President Obama?

by Patrick Courrielche

Over the years I’ve come to think of organizations as living beings – with an amorphous body, ideas as its defense mechanism, and an insatiable appetite for growth. A virtual organism if you will. And as we know with any organism, when cornered it will do (or say) just about anything to survive.

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In its quest to pass health care reform, being cornered is the plight of the virtual organism we call The Administration.

We don’t know the intricacies of the current Senate bill being drafted behind closed doors. But what we do know is that one of its cornerstones is government imposed, individual mandates for health insurance. If this element is left in the bill, our government will be given the power to force individuals into purchasing health insurance, or else be fined – giving new meaning to the term cost of living.

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Brian Darling

Obama’s Individual Health Care Mandate is Unconstitutional

by Brian Darling

The Senate is debating the future of American health care, yet one very important issue has yet to get a full and fair debate.  Is the individual mandate that forces citizens to purchase health care insurance a constitutional power of the federal government?  When House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Ca.) was asked this question, she answered with the non sequitur “are you serious?”  Conservatives who respect the idea that the constitution maps out a federal government with limited powers would answer with a loud — “Hell No.”

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The Heritage Foundation and the American Center for Law & Justice (ACLJ) recently released legal analysis calling into serious question the constitutionality of the Congress’s plan to force all citizens to purchase health insurance.  These conservative institutions argue that the unprecedented idea, a mandate that all Americans be forced into a contractual agreement with a private party for health insurance, is not a constitutionally permissible activity by the federal government.  My sources tell me that this issue will be raised during the Senate debate on ObamaCare very soon and may open another front in the war against ObamaCare.  (more…)

The New Ledger

Health Care News Update: What’s Happening in the Senate?

by The New Ledger

As the Senate considers a health care bill that amounts to the largest entitlement expansion in American history, we sit down today with health care and budget policy expert James Capretta to discuss the prospects in the Senate and the wide-ranging economic ramifications of the current legislation. It’s a special edition of Coffee and Markets, a daily podcast from The New Ledger on politics, policy and the marketplace, brought to you by BigGovernment.com and by The Heartland Institute’s Health Care News.

Coffee and Markets

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Download Podcast | iTunes | Podcast Feed

You can subscribe to the podcast by following the links above, and if you’d like to email us, you can do so at coffee[at]newledger.com. We hope you enjoy the show.

Related Links:

James Capretta’s Blog: Diagnosis
First Things: The Health Care Bill in the Senate
AEI: Opportunities Missed on Health Care
Abortion Vote Could Decide Fate of Health Care Bill
For more on this topic, see Health Care News, a publication of The Heartland Institute.

Morgen  Richmond

How the Media Has Failed America on Healthcare Reform–Part I

by Morgen Richmond

Most casual followers of politics did not pick up on the debate over healthcare reform until some time this past summer. They mostly ignored the umpteen news conferences held by the President since the spring, but they couldn’t miss the broader media coverage of town hall outrage. But for a small number of media experts on health policy, and an only slightly larger number of interested followers, the healthcare debate actually began much earlier. In fact, even prior to this year, when the initial policy formulation and political posturing took place during the Democratic primary campaign.

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All three leading Democratic candidates for President – Obama, Clinton, and yes, John Edwards – proposed virtually identical plans for healthcare reform. The only real substantive difference being that the Clinton and Edwards plans included an individual mandate for insurance, whereas Obama’s plan did not. (Obama has since come around to supporting this mandate.) But importantly, all the Democratic plans included the creation of a government-run insurance plan to compete with private insurers. What is now called, the “public option”.

Although he was destined to be a marginal candidate, Edwards played an important role in the healthcare debate. He was the first candidate to announce the details of his plan, and really put down a marker for liberal ambition on this issue leading into the election. Especially with the inclusion of the public option. And ultimately the other candidates largely followed his blueprint, even if they failed to credit him for his leadership on this issue.

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Dr. Paul Moreno

The Education of Congressman Hoyer

by Dr. Paul Moreno

Congress is moving closer to enacting a law requiring all Americans to purchase health insurance. House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer says that this is “like paying taxes.”

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He’s right about that. But Hoyer made this statement as part of an effort to justify the health-care mandate on constitutional grounds. Here he indicates that he doesn’t understand the Constitution that he took an oath to support.

When asked what power the Constitution gives to Congress to enact this legislation, Hoyer claimed that it came from the Constitution’s “general welfare” clause.

Article One, section eight says that Congress can “lay and collect taxes… to pay the debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States.”

But what defines the “general welfare”?

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