Georgia Takes Step Towards Health Care Freedom

Along with Oklahoma...

Plenty more on similar subject at the link but this isn't going away.

[the usual keepers]Why do you Right Wing Nutjobs hate the poor so much?[/the usual keepers]

I don't hate poor people. I hate freeloaders.

These guys are still fighting the Civil War. That states don't have the power to nullify federal law was established with finality a long time ago. This is even more ridiculous than the frivolous constitutional challenges against the reform art, which at least have the virtue of the theoretical possibility of victory.

Would you say that Oklahoma, Idaho, and Utah are Confederate states or Union states?

Aww, that's the weak way out! They shouldn't give their residents a choice--it should be all or nothing, either the state ratifies the health care bill or it doesn't. This will be interesting to watch.

I wonder how this would hold up in the court of law.

You guys are living in an illusion if you think the federal government would recognize state rights.

This has all happened before and it will all happen again.

Like it or not, the Constitution does limit the power of the federal government.

If 30 or 40 states decline to accept this law, it isn't going to be accepted. The attorney generals of those states will file suit on 10th Amendment grounds and they'll have a damned good chance of winning.

But if the states don't reassert their rights on this law, they never will.

That, of course, is the question.

By putting such laws into place, they clearly are challenging the federal government's right to trample the rights of the states to deal with issues not assigned to the federal government by the Constitution. (Exactly what California is doing with their "legal weed" proposition.) But once such laws are on the books, they have to be struck down by SCOTUS, which means the issue has to come up directly. And you can bet they will have good lawyers arguing on 10th Amendment grounds.

20 years ago, such a challenge wouldn't have had a ghost of a chance of succeeding. Even today, I don't give it much of a chance. But it is by no means the open-and-shut thing that it once was. More and more states are explicitely challenging the federal government. If it isn't on health care, it's on pot or guns or something else. What if the growing number of strict constructionists on SCOTUS actually managed to form a majority with a couple of others, and the court agreed that the federal government doesn't have the right to do one of those things?

That would be glorious!

"X: It's a Constitution thing -- you wouldn't understand."

It'll never happen because the 10th Amendment doesn't expressly prohibit the implied powers of the United States. That, and it would turn two hundred years of law on it's head.

As for this specific bill, I can't see it actually violating the 10th Amendment, because of the Commerce Clause, and that the primary motivator through all of this is by federal funding Medicare and Medicaid (which is entirely constitutional, it's why most highways are 70mph).

Also, nullification acts are a joke and a dumb one at that.

As I understand it, most interstate highways are 70 because the Feds bribe the states to make them that way. And, while you're probably right that this Obamanation will stand, it's because people have gotten quite used to selling their freedoms and not pushing their state governments to get serious about backing the 10th. It's been that way a long time now.

"Obamanation" sounds like a wrestling move, but I digress.

Someone needs to dig up Zachary Taylor. He had the right idea when it came to nullification.

The 'legal weed'...as an example is a law in California that was struck down by the FedGov, and then the Supreme Court, IIRC.

Not in the sense that the law was struck down, but there was a case about a woman buying legal weed and commerce clause being brought into everything by the FedGov.

It is interesting that the "Commerce Clause", until recently, was always referred to as the "Interstate Commerce Clause". Since the text very clearly states that it's to be used to regulate commerce "among" the states and not "within" the states, I would think what Georgia or another state wants to do within its own borders is pretty much fair game.

What's interesting, though, is that if the Feds allowed insurance companies to compete for health insurance customers across state lines then they'd have a valid argument for using the Interstate Commerce Clause to regulate them. Go figure, huh?

You can't put it in past tense, since they haven't even voted on it yet. It's a referendum, for this coming November.

It'll be an interesting test case for whether SCOTUS is really in adversarial mode against Obama, if nothing else. (If it happens that fast, of course)

The feds have always allowed this. It's been the states that have been against it. The current bill allows it even more, if there is such a concept. But it doesn't do anything about state laws in the way.

Interesting, you're one of the few who come right out and say that. Are you sure?

Changing the subject slightly,

From Wall Street Journal's "Opinion Journal"

As far as I know, it's always been this way, yes. If you'd care to link to a Federal law prohibiting interstate health insurance, however, I'd be much obliged.

The history, at least the bit of it I've just re-read, is conflicted. The states do want to keep the regulation of insurance companies but the feds can't seem to stay out of the matter. The McCarran-Ferguson Act exempts them from federal antitrust laws but that's been severely tested and limited by the courts. (And that history tends to follow what the government overall wants - see Roosevelt, for instance.) In addition, Congress has pushed legislatively into states' territory and this year's law has opened the door even further.

But what I had dropped earlier here was more along the lines of this: There's so much debate (or is it really just bashing?) back and forth but there seems to be very little real news challenging the claim about the cause of the lack of interstate competition. I can give you several claims that D.C. is the problem vis a vis lack of competition but they're generally pretty partisan. While they're useful for some things, I was looking for something a little better for you. On the other hand, do you have something that specifically argues your side? Like I said, it seems to be a given. Or, maybe I'm just looking in the wrong places.

They've always allowed it, but from what I understand the insurance commissioners in each state have a dick up their ass.

Well, that's two, then. Must've misunderstood that problem. Thanks, guys.

I've always understood tort reform being a reform of the stupid state insurance policies.

Something the Feds would probably have to make happen.

It's the near-absoluteness of their power in this domain, thus making them extremely valuable investments for insurance companies to buy.

Health care freedom is the right for the health care companies to rape your wallet.

Like most people, you fail to distinguish between health care freedom, and what we had before last Sunday, two concepts which are not at all the same.

As opposed to the Federal gubmint raping your wallet.