No Scotus/Obamacare thread?

Sure you can. What's stopping you?
I have decent health insurance. I have no problem getting health care when I get sick.

I think I've beaten this dead horse to my sufficient amusement now.

FYI: For a supposed "lawyer", you sure suck at words.

No, actually the reason most folks don't support it is that it doesn't really help the folks get the right insurance.

There are a lot of insurances out there that seem to be proper health insurance covering things like in-patient and out-patient care, and don't. The law doesn't take care of those, and folks could easily buy it thinking they are fulfilling the mandate, and the government probably won't know that the insurance bought doesn't cover what needs covering.

Another reason that some of us don't like the entire health care bill/law is that the baby was tossed out with the bath water; instead of looking at what was broke, and fix it one step at a time, the politicians, who don't even have degrees in health care management, decided they knew all the ways to fix things.

No, dummy. There is a difference between health CARE and health INSURANCE. People who are not sick most definitely do not need health CARE. They are already healthy.

I was having fun at the "lawyer"'s inability to use the correct terms to frame his argument. Your dumb ass wandering into the middle of it.

1. It's unconstitutional.

2. The country is on the verge of bankruptcy and can't afford this program.

2. It's unconstitutional.

Because it's not as if the insurers or the healthcare professionals could be expected to fix the thing they broke in the first place...

Late to the party, Braniac.

One doesn't need to be sick to require health care. Preventative medicine, last time I checked, is health care that can be applied to the healthy to prevent illness and other medical misfortune.

Preventive medicine (a very odd name, considering) does no good to people that are healthy.

It only does good for people who are sick and haven't discovered it yet.

Although I'll be honest, I'm willing to have my mind changed.

What kind of benefit does a healthy person get from preventive medicine?

So you're best argument is to say I wasn't precise enough in my words?

It's not an "argument". It's called, "I'm fucking with you".

You know, for my own amusement.

Q.v. polio vaccine. Q.v. immunization against mumps, a disease that, while not usually a killer, can cause sterility in males. Q.v. immunization against rubella, also not usually a killer in the industrialized world, but a pregnant woman exposed to it risks having a baby with hearing loss.

Those will do for starters.

Fair point. I've simply forgotten about immunizations since it's been sooooo long since I've needed them, and no children of my own to bring that one to immediate mind.

I'm assuming most of us here have never had smallpox. That is in large part due to vaccinations. Although smallpox vaccinations are less common now, that is in large part due to the virus being mostly wiped out in those countries that did issue the vaccine. While some of us may never have received the smallpox vaccine, we nevertheless benefited from past vaccinations.

Many children have never had chicken pox because they received the chicken pox vaccine.

The preventive aspects of health care are not limited to just vaccines, of course. People who are not used to tropic climates are often prescribed anti-malarial medicines.

Many young men and women have avoided a plethora of STDs thanks to condoms.

Even smoking cessation, weight loss, and healthy eating programs can qualify as preventive medicine, especially since smoking and obesity are commonly linked with one of the most common killers in the United States: heart disease.

Even basic hygiene qualifies as preventive medicine. Many pathogens throughout history could have been stopped had germ theory come along sooner.

Do you brush your teeth?

Get your eyes checked?

Go to the dentist?

Get a physical?

Take vitamins?

Exercise?

All of those are preventitive in some way.

Are you arguing that I need health insurance or the intervention of a doctor to brush my teeth?

If my eyes are ok, I don't need the eye exam. If my eyes are bad, only then does the eye exam do me any good.

If my teeth are ok, I don't need the dentist. If my teeth are bad, only then does the dentist do me any good.

As my own doctor pointed out, a physical doesn't do a healthy person any good. The physical is only a benefit to someone with an undiscovered health problem.

I haven't seen any scientific evidence that points to any benefit whatsoever from taking vitamins. If you are not getting the nutrition you need from your diet, then you have a medical problem that vitamins won't do anything to fix.

I don't think I have ever heard someone argue that "exercise" counts as "health care".

No, not all of them are preventive, and not all of them count as "health care".

No link to the argument transcripts? For shame, Wordforge.

Chaos, I have to think you're being obtuse on purpose. A rational person doesn't think like that.

Because it is an enormous Constitutional violation. It sets up the end of limited govt in the most insidious ways.

In essence it allows the Federal govt to decide the most personal issues regarding our bodies and lives and force us to comply. That is far worse than the taxation without representation that led to the Revolution.

The govt could decide how many children you can have. Force gentetic testing before being allowed to have children. All of these would be legal game in the name of the "public good"

If this is allowed to stand, no liberty or freedom is safe. Controls over everything from what food we buy, to if we go to a doctor, get medical tests etc will become the purview of the Fed govt instead of ourselves.

Another in a series of threads you've started being surprised your "opposition" didn't behave as you'd anticipated.

Perhaps your characterization needs redefining.

Healthy, pregnant people need healthcare.

Regardless, in this country that is my choice to decide, not the govt's. If I don't want teeth, it's my business. Etc.

Nobody's taking away your choice to decide. The law isn't forcing anyone to buy health insurance.

This is great. Obama's two signature acts as president were the stimulus and Obamacare. One is a failure and the other is illegal.

Fining or taxing someone who refuses is considered coercion and/or forcing in this context.

Well, you don't always know you're sick. For example, mammograms are required for women 40 years or older, right? My gynecologist told me about a lady who had skipped hers for several years because she couldn't afford it. When she finally went in, they discovered a tennis ball sized cancerous tumor. Since she had ginormous boobs, she hadn't noticed that she had ridiculous amounts of cancer. As far as that lady knew, she was healthy and nothing had been wrong. Apparently stuff like that is pretty common.

Every summer there's a story about a kid who runs cross-country and dies from a sudden heart attack. The free physicals you get to do sports in school don't check the heart with more than a stethoscope. Better preventative medicine could save these kids who don't know they have a bad heart.

You've still got a choice. You can choose to pay the fine. I would imagine that if SCOTUS were to allow the law to stand, a shit ton of people would choose to do just that.

I just think it's ironic that the whole individual mandate was originally put forward and championed by Republicans...including Gingrich, and boo-badded by Democrats...including Obama. Now look where we are.

No one is really arguing that preventative health care is a good idea. Just that the gov't has no right to force you to get any sort of healthcare, with the possible exception of control of severe contagions that cause immediate threat of mass disease and death.

You're wrong twice here.

1. The government isn't forcing you to do anything, as has already been established whether you want to admit it or not,

2. We're talking about health insurance here, not health care....which has also already been established.

Does the government force people to pay traffic fines?

If you don't buy health insurance, and don't pay the fine for that, then what is the penalty?

To say they're not forcing you to do anything is inaccurate my friend.