The Big O Loses the Big One

Some people just can't be happy for ObamaCare.

The Supreme Court. On most days, but not today, it is simply the Scaley Five. Today, it shocked the world by upholding ObamaCare's individual mandate. The one that makes you buy medical insurance or the IRS will visit you next next April to extract an ounce or two of the flesh you insist is invincible.

BuyO'Pay, one might call it.

Great? Or more like "okay."

The kludge that is BuyO'Pay eeked [sic] by on the tax angle. The Feds can sic the IRS on you until you scream. And then can't anymore. As in, who needs the rack these days?

Mandate on that for a while!

But the rationale that matters, the one that might allow real healthcare reform some day? That one was flogged silly (emphasis, silly) by an argument so comical that this long snoozing blog awoke like the alarm went off before noon.

The rationale employed Jon-Bob (Chief Justice Roberts if you got here late) for rejecting the use of the Commerce Clause to uphold the individual mandate is completely so next to last century, as one would expect. Perhaps, that was the deal that got his vote to uphold BuyO'Pay on taxing grounds.

Jon-Bob is pretending, essentially, that individuals without insurance are not in interstate commerce in the healthcare market.

If pretending were actual thinking, you'd all be at MIT.

He does use the insurance angle, but health insurance is not really not just insurance. Healthcare and its coverage is best though of as the medical risk allocation and coverage market. The one in which you all trade, almost every day. Today, did you take that aspirin you bought last week? Or use a band aid? Soap and condoms (though both may be more about religion and sex)? It's about health and medical care.

Almost everyone's medical risks in this country is covered one or more risk-spreading schemes. Every single product you touch is covered by product liability insurance, mostly to cover medical risks. By car insurance and workers comp, both with significant medical care coverage. Most of America's adult youth are, however vaguely, in the market for jobs not yet outsourced by Bain. Such jobs almost always come with fringes and workers comp. Those who are not interested in jobs, are likely eligible for Medicaid or living in their parents' attic as insurance riders

Your medical risks are covered, in part, by insurance held by others whenever you drive, shop, go to school or eat a Big Mac and super-sized fries.

You are not all in the national market for medical risk coverage? Please. Try to avoid it.

You are all covered by Social Security disability or Medicaid right now. All you have to do is meet the eligibility standards. You pay for Medicare, which is what, exactly? You are covered by governmental mandates that most ER's can't reject your emergency medical treatment, private insurance or not. If that's not a socially imposed medical risk coverage, what is?

Even just using a sidewalk. What do you keep telling yourself: Step on a crack, send your mother the ER. for free. Well, at least, that's her frakkin' risk, not yours. Unless, of course, you trip and break your own back or something silly.

Admittedly, if the sky falls, that is a medical risk that is not covered. And, thanks in small part to Jon-Bob's rationalizing, that is coming.

Care for Health or the Constitution. Pick Only One.

What's the legal difference between a rabbit and a Hare?  The rabbit goes into hiding but is not a Congressman embarrassing the whole state of Illinois.

Phil Hare is, for now, a Congressman from Illinois.  Phil doesn't care about the Constitution, which he thinks is the Declaration of Independence anyway.

To be fair (don't laugh), nobody can tell the difference between the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, except, maybe, that the latter has more catchy phrasing.  That's because Thomas Jefferson was in France applauding the guillotine during the drafting of the former.

And can anyone tell the difference between "former" and "latter"?

Phil probably can't, either, but he doesn't care.  He only health cares.  He couldn't care less about the Constitution.  He cares way more about people who die without health care than those who live without the Pursuit of Happiness (Oops!  The Declaration, again.)

Without being specific, Phil said he wants to make every person, probably including corporations, get health insurance by the end of the day.  Easter and the following Monday are really holidays, so they surely don't count.  Figure Tuesday.

Phil was baggered into making these comments by a Mr. Tea fan.  Phil did not have his Congressional Constitution For Dummies handy and who uses seven commas in a preamble these days?  Unfortunately, Phil didn't get any better when he had time to read the damn thing backwards and compare it to Jefferson's better quilled Declaration of Independence.

Everyone knows that it is the Constitutions Commerce Clause that gives the Feds the right to do pretty much whatever they want when money is involved.  And when is it not?

Under it, Article I, Section 8, Clause 3 (just look at the commas!), Congress has the power to regulate commerce with foreign nations, among the States and with Indian tribes.  The latter should give Congress the right to get us in on all that gambling revenue the Indians think is all theirs (will they never learn?).  But it also has been held by the Supreme Court to give Congress the right, if not the brains, to meddle in just about anything.

Would Scaley, himself, even argue?  Much?  So, aside from him.

An example that comes first to mind:  You would think that your corner bar wouldn't involve commerce beyond the back alley which is regularly used in connection with the bar for related activities, which the bar owner has to clean up.  Historically, to, say, the 1990's, in most corner bars, you weren't welcome if you weren't "from here", which usually meant the Irish ward.  When the Constitution was written, taverns got both their corn products, beers and patrons locally.  Not now:  Patrons are encouraged by cities to come in from many places, from across State lines and from foreign countries, to get a Bud in your corner bar.  The Bud almost never comes from down the street from that corner, either, unless you are in St. Louis or Jacksonville.

In George Washington's day, health care was local, too.  Maybe, the leeches were imported, but they never traveled over state lines themselves.  Poking a hole in a malfunctioning skull or sawing off a limb with ugly freckles didn't require equipment from Germany.  Morphine hadn't been developed in--where else?--Germany by 1789.  Neither had the aspirin (Germany) or Tylenol (Germany again) that you get for $10 a pop at the hospital today.

Come on, Phil, it's the Commerce Clause.  Nothing in this country is local, not even the Mr. T fan club, whose members live to be on the very nationwide FOX Spews.  Interstate and international commerce!

What in your local hospital is made in your state. The CAT scan?  The hospital bed?  The static-free tile?  The executive jet for executive trips to satellite clinics in Italy?  Where did the very doctors come from?  Where did the nurses go, for that matter?  No self-respecting hospital uses in-state collection agencies to stress its patients into revenue-producing relapses.  Don't even mention the insurance companies.  One exception:  Blue Cross, which is franchised nationally, like McDonald's without the fries.

Okay.  Phil, you are now prepared to go out in public again.

Still, don't.