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Today's ruling by a federal appeals court in Ohio, upholding the Obama health care law, marks the first time a Republican-appointed judge has found the most controversial part of the law constitutional.
The ruling by a three-judge panel of the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals was 2-1 on the "individual mandate" -- the requirement that all Americans get health insurance. One of the judges voting to uphold it was Jeffrey Sutton, an appointee of George W. Bush and a former law clerk for Justice Antonin Scalia.
This brings to four the number of court decisions upholding the law. Two other courts have declared it unconstitutional on its long march to the Supreme Court.
UPDATE: In 1942, the US Supreme Court ruled that Congress had the power to stop an Ohio farmer, Roscoe Filbert, from growing his own wheat. The court said then that his decision to grow his own, rather than buying wheat on the national market, affected interstate commerce, which Congress has the authority to regulate.
Today, the Sixth Circuit appeals court said the same logic applies to health insurance.
Opponents had argued that while Congress has broad authority to regulate economic activity, it has no authority over inactivity, such as a failure to buy insurance. But the appeals court said today that Congress is actually regulating the market of self-insurance for health care, in which people try to find some way to cover their costs other than by purchasing insurance.
But the court said self-insuring affects interstate commerce, by shifting the costs of the un-insured to people who have insurance, just as the wheat farmer affected interstate commerce by growing and consuming his own wheat instead of buying it on the national market.
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So, the argument that says that the government can tell ONE SINGLE PERSON not to grow wheat is that same as the government telling EVERY AMERICAN to buy a product.
Yeah, sure.
who gets to decide that they do not have to be your representatives after they are elected ? who the hell is grover norquist ? is he the new god ? or just the new jesus ? is grover norquist the new constitution ? or just every person that signed his crap needs to be removed from office ? just asking . oh please mr grover sir may i have a copy of your whatever you call it ?sorry gotta watch care to wager you will not hear from me in 2 days and if you hear from me in 2 days it will be a totally different toon
Obama crafted that every person in America MUST purchase insurance from private companies and you lunatics somehow bring it back to the REPUBLICANS being the party of corporate welfare? Maybe if politics stopped blinding everybody and common sense and ethics meant a damn thing we would have a healthcare plan that covered all Americans equally. When a provision that would have allowed people to cross state lines to purchase insurance was attempted the Democrats shot it down simply because it was a Republican proposal. That means that as a citizen of New Jersey I have to pay almost $1,000 for the same health care that if I went to the EXACT SAME COMPANY acrost the river in Pennsylvania would cost me less than $500. Washington is simply concerned with proping up the rich and destroying the middle class. The rich can afford this plan and the poor will be bailed out by the government, meanwhile the government will steal every last dime the middle class has in order to fuel the bueracracy. Of course you have your liberal d**k in office so the needs of the country go out the window. As long as your party is in power you are content. This goes for all of you. When Bush was in the Republicans were just as blind and America died under him too. Stop being Republicans and Democrats and start being Americans.
This goes beyond healthcare for me. The federal government making me buy a product is a very slippery slope to go down. While the left may like a SCOTUS victory, ask yourself what then will the right force me to buy when they get control of all three branches at some point in the future?
You have communist healthcare to seize control of your body, with the communist "Patriot Act" to control what it does, all the while you are sold out to communist China and Vietnam, and have perpetual war against manuever ("terrorism").
Mandatory healthcare violates the most basic concept of our Constitution, which is liberty---the right to choose.
Mandatory healthcare will result in an annual physical, wherein you will be told how much to weigh, what bad habits to quit, what kind of food to eat, and what drugs you will take. Refuse, and the doctor tells the healthcare provider, who either drops your coverage or inflates your premiums---don't pay up, and the IRS ruins you.
Absolutely communist.
unhealthy people always having their own insurance causes my rates to go up even though i never ever go to the doctor!!!
rich people actually paying the full bill no matter how ridiculous it may be and insurance companies doing the same cause health care costs to be sky high for all of us!!!
how is it not screwing up the health insurance market enough already to be called illegal under this same exact ruling!!
free health care for everyone or forget it!!