We won’t know for sure until June, but based on the reaction of Supreme Court justices to oral arguments last week it now appears a bit more likely than not that the Court will rule that the individual mandate is Unconstitutional and may even void the entire law.  Predictably there is outrage from the Left.  President Obama made some remarks to the Press that some have interpreted as an attempt to intimidate the Justices.  He began:

The justices should understand that in the absence of the individual mandate you cannot have a mechanism to ensure that people wit a pre-existing condition can actually get health care.

This is simply not so.  There are mechanisms in place and people who are currently uninsurable due to pre-existing conditions do receive health care every day.  There are government programs including Medicaid.  Federal law requires all hospitals to treat anyone who shows up, without regard to their insurance or ability to pay.  Finally, there still is what used to work pretty well before the politics made the federal government the dominant force in health care, medical services provided to the needy and the uninsurable by churches and charities.

For example, The Shriners Hospitals for Children where some of the most intractable and expensive childhood maladies are treated without charge and without any government assistance are entirely funded by donations.  Families are not billed for services to their children.  They voluntarily donate whatever they feel they can afford, which sometimes is nothing and rarely is more than a tiny fraction of the actual cost of the care their children receive.

There is a lot of dissatisfaction with the American health care status quo to be sure.  Almost everyone wants it to be reformed in some way.  But the streets are not littered with sick and injured people unable to access care.

The President continued with his remarks directed at the Justices of the Supreme Court:

There’s not only an economic element to this and a legal element to this but a human element to this and I hope that is not forgotten in this political debate.

Actually, this is no longer a “political debate,” or at least it shouldn’t be.  The Court’s job is to rule on Constitutionality.  Be assured he won’t call it “political” if the Court rules in his favor.

Obama’s term “Human element” refers only to the humans he intends to be direct beneficiaries of his health care leviathan with the expectation that they will forever vote Democrat.  When he says “human element” he is not thinking about:

• the humans who will lose their employer-provided health plans, the plans he promised at least 100 times they could keep.
• the humans who will  be forced to close their small businesses, due to the costs and requirements of ObamaCare
• the humans who will lose their jobs and/or be unable to find jobs because employers are hesitant to risk capital with the threat of yet unknown healthcare costs and mandates.
• the humans who will be paying a higher cost for health insurance in order to fund new, unwanted mandates cooked up by Obama’s political appointees in the bureaucracy.
• human physicians who will lose their autonomy and become subject to new restrictions and bureaucratic controls.

President Obama continued:

Ultimately I’m confident that this supreme court will not take what would be an unprecedented, extraordinary step of overturning a law that was passed by a strong majority of a democratically elected Congress.

Well, the first time the Supreme Court overturned a law passed by Congress on Constitutional grounds was in 1803.  Since then the Court has ruled that scores of laws were Unconstitutional and overturned them.  By claiming that overturning his health care law would be unprecedented Obama shows either that he is appallingly ignorant or he believes we are.

His term “strong majority” indicates that either his memory is failing or he thinks ours is.  In 2010 Democrats had huge majority in the House of Representatives, one of the largest ever.  Yet ObamaCare passed by only seven votes, 219 – 212.  Every Republican and 97 Democrats voted against the measure.  In the Senate ObamaCare got 60 votes, the minimum required to pass.  Some of those Senate votes were openly bought and paid for with special concessions and kick-backs to certain Senators’ home states that were not given to other states.

The day after these remarks the President was challenged by a reporter’s question:

Mr. President, you said yesterday that it would be ‘unprecedented’ for a Supreme Court to overturn laws passed by an elected Congress. But that is exactly what the court’s done during its entire existence. If the court were to overturn the individual mandate, what would you do, or propose to do, for the 30 million people who wouldn’t have health care after that ruling?”

Obama answered very slowly and haltingly, seeming to find it difficult to put his thoughts into words:

We have not seen a court overturn [pause] a [pause] law that was passed [pause] by Congress on [pause] a [pause] economic issue, like health care, that I think most people would clearly consider commerce. A law like that has not been overturned [pause] at least since Lochner, right? So we’re going back to the ’30s, pre-New Deal.

Lochner was a New York State labor law that was brought to the Supreme Court and overturned as Unconstitutional.  It was not a federal law and is thus irrelevant to the current controversy.

“The point I was making is that the Supreme Court is the final say on our Constitution and our laws and all of us have to respect it.  But its precisely because of that extraordinary power that the court has traditionally shown restraint … so the burden is on those who would over turn a law like this.

So is he saying that because the court has the authority to declare a law Unconstitutional it should not do so?  Actually, the “burden” is on those who would defy the Constitution with the claim that it grants Congress and the President, in Nancy Pelosi’s words, “unlimited power” over every American’s health insurance and access to health care.

The very idea of unlimited power was repugnant to the authors of the Constitution.  Unlimited power was exactly the outcome they sought to prevent.  If the court upholds ObamaCare, if the Justices agree Congress has the authority to compel every person to purchase a health plan whose terms and coverages are dictated by the Executive Branch then the 236 year American era of individual freedom under a government of limited powers will have ended.

“The Affordable Care Act addresses a fundamental and enduring problem in our health care system and our economy. For most Americans, for more than 80 percent of Americans, the insurance system does provide effective access. But for more than 40 million Americans who do not have access to health insurance either through their employer or through government programs such as Medicare or Medicaid, the system does not work.”

Mr Verilli’s “insurance system” is mostly health plans provided by employers.  So how did these plans plus government become “our health care system?”  It’s not as if several competing ways to finance medical services have been offered.  It’s not as if a majority of customers chose employer-provided insurance plans over any alternative.  In fact, employer health plans came about almost by accident.

Employers began providing health plans during World War II as a work-around because  war-time regulations banned salary increases.  From the beginning, tax law permitted employers to treat the cost as a business expense, like wages.  But, unlike cash wages and other forms of non-cash compensation, tax law also allowed the employee to receive the health plan tax free.  To this day there is no payroll tax or income tax on the dollar value of health insurance, as long as it is provided by one’s employer.

Through the years federal and state governments imposed upon the health care market additional incentives to enshrine employer-provided plans as the politically preferred arrangement and to penalize other ideas by making them more expensive.  Today, most Americans are too young to remember a time when government didn’t heavily regulate and influence health care finance.

Mr Verrilli continued:

Those individuals [who do not receive employer-provided insurance] must resort to the individual market, and that market does not provide affordable health insurance. It does not do so because it — because the multi-billion dollar subsidies that are available for the employer market are not available in the individual market.

By “subsidies” he means the tax free treatment of employer-provided health plans.  People who purchase their own plans must pay with after tax income.

So why aren’t individuals who don’t receive insurance from an employer entitled to the same tax treatment as those who do?  It’s not as if there were some holy principle that can’t be breached.  Congress changes the tax code almost every year and could immediately empower individuals by deleting the tax punishment they suffer for the offense of buying health insurance.  Instead Congress enacted 2,700 pages of impenetrable legalese that will ramp up scores of new government agencies and bureaus, and compel every American to purchase a health plan that complies with new government commands.

According to a CBO analysis part of the new revenue ObamaCare will raise will be in the form of higher income tax payments from people whose employers elect to terminate health insurance benefits as a result of the high cost compelled by ObamaCare.  The CBO assumed those employers would increase the cash wages of those employees by an amount equal to the cost of the terminated health plans.  Thus, ObamaCare punishes even more people for the sin of buying insurance individually instead of through their employers.

While supporters don’t openly acknowledge it, ObamaCare’s underlying assumption is that the status quo, mostly employer-provided health plans, is the last, best idea best idea there will ever be.  Indeed, the effect of ObamaCare is to permanently entrench the most expensive type of health plan, mostly employer provided as the only means of financing outside of Medicaid, which is already on life support.

ObamaCare effectively blocks all future health care financing ideas or innovations by making them illegal.

If the government had obeyed the Constitution in the first place there would be no tax punishment imposed on those who purchase their own insurance.  If the government obeyed the Constitution the challenges of health care finance would be met by competing ideas offered to voluntary customers by private sector entities.  Each incremental step in expanding government’s role in controlling how medical services are delivered and financed has been sold as a problem solver.  But each has brought with it a new set of problems to be solved by yet more government intervention.  The process won’t end until every hospital belongs to the federal government and every health care professional is a government employee.  And when that finally happens the problems will be more intractable than ever.

If the court strikes down the individual mandate President Obama and future Congresses will be on notice that there are still limits to government’s power over the people.

The “individual mandate,” is the requirement that every person in America purchase a health plan, with the terms and specifications of that plan dictated by federal officials.  President Obama and the progressives he represents argue that the Constitution’s Commerce Clause authorizes government to issue the individual mandate decree.  Unfortunately, politicians and judges and Supreme Court Justices have brazenly violated the Constitution for nearly a century, largely through deliberate misinterpretation of the commerce clause which says:

“The Congress shall have Power To…regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes”

The term “Commerce” meant buying and selling transactions, in this case across state lines.    It was seen as a modest federal power to prevent state governments from erecting tariffs or other barriers that would inhibit transactions across state lines as had happened during the years leading up to the drafting of the Constitution.  James Madison wrote in Federalist Paper #22 of problems caused by state governments:

“The interfering and unneighborly regulations of some States, contrary to the true spirit of the Union, have, in different instances, given just cause of umbrage and complaint to others, and it is to be feared that examples of this nature, if not restrained by a national control, would be multiplied and extended till they became not less serious sources of animosity and discord…”

Madison was concerned that some states had already tried to restrict interstate transactions with various forms of taxes and regulations and could cripple interstate commerce as had happened in the German empire.

But Progressives don’t care about the original purpose or meaning of the commerce clause.  They hold that ObamaCare is authorized based not on what the Constitution says but on Supreme Court precedent, notably the decision in Wickard v. Filburn, 317 U.S. 111 (1942).  During the Great Depression Congress, dominated by progressives, had imposed limits on crop production, in an effort to reduce the food supply and cause prices to rise.  Progressives claimed, preposterously, that the Constitutional power to regulate transactions across state lines included the power to dictate the amount of wheat a farmer was allowed to grow.

Mr. Filburn was fined by the government for growing “too much” wheat.  He argued that Congress had no Constitutional authority to regulate his wheat production because his entire crop was consumed on his own farm, and was not sold to anyone, and therefore could not possibly be part of interstate commerce.  The government agreed that Filburn didn’t sell any of his wheat but argued that he affected interstate commerce by not buying wheat on the open, interstate market.  The court took the government’s side and the rest is history.

Based on this precedent and ignoring the plain language of the Constitution, President Obama and the Democrats and Progressives  now justify a federal law requiring us all to purchase a health plan designed by bureaucrats in Washington because not buying it has “an effect on interstate commerce.”

The word “effect” is not in the Constitution and it is clear that the Founders’ intent was not to grant Congress such sweeping power.

But since it could be argued that virtually any human activity could, however remotely, effect interstate commerce, we are now told that The Founders meant for Congress and the federal government to have unlimited power to intervene and control every aspect of our lives.

There are obvious, simple questions the progressives should be able to answer.  If the founders intended for Congress to have unlimited power why did they include a list of limited, authorized powers in Article I, section 8?  The progressives have no answer.  If they wanted to empower Congress to be able to require or regulate anything, without limit, why did they add the tenth amendment?

“The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”  —Tenth Amendment

The progressives have no answer.

The Administration’s position in court will be the progressive position that an individual decision to not buy government approved health insurance is an “affirmative economic activity” subject to regulation by the government.  This position begs the question: Do progressives recognize any action or inaction that is not subject to government command under the Commerce clause?

Progressives often complain that Conservatives want to “regulate what goes on in the privacy of our bedrooms.”  But under the progressive interpretation of the commerce clause even those bedroom happenings can be regulated since they “effect” commerce by diverting participants from shopping or watching TV commercials.

A Court ruling that ObamaCare is permitted under the Constitution would consummate the progressive movement’s dream of implementing the very sort of authoritarian control the founders fought the Revolutionary War and wrote the Constitution to avoid: a system where all the limits are on the liberty of The People, with no limits on the power of government.

I am certain that I speak on behalf of my entire nation when I say: September 11th we are all Americans – in grief, as in defiance.

The Administration recently announced an ObamaCare commandment that every health plan, paid for by every employer, must provide sterilizations and contraception, including abortifacients, or drugs that induce abortion, without any co-payment, or as the naive media put it “free” to the insured employee.

America’s Catholic Bishops are defiant, insisting that the regulation violates Church doctrine and they will not accept this application of brute, government force.  They publicly refused to pay for these drugs and procedures through health plans provided to employees of Catholic hospitals, charities, schools, etc.

As Netanyahu and his people stood in defiance with Americans after 9-11, all Americans should stand in defiance with the Catholic Church against this government dictum, even if we are not Catholic or don’t agree with their positions on these drugs and procedures.

Progressives like Barack Obama are scornful of individual liberty.  They believe laws and regulations that enforce the opinions of “experts” can make us all better than we can be on our own.  The Constitution used to protect Americans from arbitrary and excessive application of force by an imperious President.  But after a century of adverse precedent, approved by corrupt Supreme Court Justices, modern Presidents and Congresses largely ignore the Constitution’s limits on their power.

The gradual degradation of the Constitution has culminated in ObamaCare which requires all employers to provide health plans or pay a fine, and requires all health plans to conform to the terms dictated by the government.   Employees exchange their labor for wages and benefits and thus pay for health insurance.  No matter who you are, regardless of your gender or religious beliefs, or lack of beliefs there will be something in that mandatory, government health plan you don’t need or don’t want and would not voluntarily pay for.  But, like the Catholics, you will be required to pay for it anyway.

Inevitably, there will be more requirements imposed by government because “experts” will determine them neecessary to “save health care dollars by keeping us healthier.”  There will be bans or restrictions on certain foods, perhaps even recreational activities, or high school sports where there is a risk of injury.

By protesting the Unconstitutional mandates in ObamaCare the Bishops serve the cause of liberty for all of us.  We will all benefit from their courageous defiance of authoritarian government mandates, implemented by using force against the people.

Today, the President showed some defiance of his own.  Accompanied by HHS Secretary and de facto ObamaCare Czar Kathleen Sebelius he stepped to the cameras to announce what White House officials had told reporters would be a “compromise” between the goal of the regulation and Catholic doctrines.

In his statement Obama displayed his contempt for the intelligence of all Americans.  He said that all women would still be guaranteed “free” contraceptives, but if a woman worked for a Catholic hospital, school or charity…

…the insurance company, not the hospital, not the charity will be required to reach out and offer the woman contraceptive care free of charge.

Obviously an insurance company can not provide anything “free of charge.”  The company pays for everything it provides out of premiums it collects from employers.  So this is just bunkum.  It’s political double-speak, or as a church spokesman called it, an accounting gimmick.

If Obama can be believed and the insurance company will indeed “reach out” it means that the only women in America who will be offered these drugs and procedures without formally requesting them, the only women who will instead be contacted by the company, will be those who work for the Catholics!

UPDATE

On Friday afternoon The US Conference of Catholic Bishops issued a written statement in response to President Obama’s announcement.  The key word is “unacceptable.” You can read the full statement here.  Here’s an excerpt:

…we note at the outset that the lack of clear protection for key stakeholders—for self-insured religious employers; for religious and secular for-profit employers; for secular non-profit employers; for religious insurers; and for individuals—is unacceptable and must be corrected.

And in the case where the employee and insurer agree to add the objectionable coverage, that coverage is still provided as a part of the objecting employer’s plan, financed in the same way as the rest of the coverage offered by the objecting employer. This, too, raises serious moral concerns.

We just received information about this proposal for the first time this morning; we were not consulted in advance. Some information we have is in writing and some is oral. We will, of course, continue to press for the greatest conscience protection we can secure from the Executive Branch. But stepping away from the particulars, we note that today’s proposal continues to involve needless government intrusion in the internal governance of religious institutions, and to threaten government coercion of religious people and groups to violate their most deeply held convictions. In a nation dedicated to religious liberty as its first and founding principle, we should not be limited to negotiating within these parameters.

The only complete solution to this religious liberty problem is for HHS to rescind the mandate of these objectionable services.

The political-media establishment often cites Medicare as a “popular” example of the benefits of activist government, unrestrained by Constitutional limits.  But in a rational world Medicare would be seen as a monument to progressive myths, deceptions and failures.
In 1965 President Lyndon Johnson traveled to the Missouri home of former President Harry Truman for an emotional media event celebrating enactment of Medicare.  The two of them repeated some of the preposterous talking points that had helped sell the Medicare scheme to the Congress and the public.

Truman was first to speak:

This is an important hour for the Nation, for those of our citizens who have completed their tour of duty and have moved to the sidelines…These people are entitled, among other benefits, to the best medical protection available.

Then Johnson took over:

…through this new law, every citizen will be able, in his productive years when he is earning, to insure himself against the ravages of illness in his old age….

The genius of Medicare – from the point of view of progressives – is how quickly and irrevocably it ensnared the generations in government dependency.  The elderly immediately began receiving subsidized health care and were immediately grateful to Democrats.  Those who were working and paying the bill might have been more resistant except they were told they were buying “insurance” that would care for them in retirement – and it was amazingly cheap insurance.  More from Johnson’s speech of 1965

During your working years, the people of America–you–will contribute through the social security program a small amount each payday for Medicare insurance protection.  For example, the average worker in 1966 will contribute about $1.50 per month. The employer will contribute a similar amount…And through this new law every citizen will be able, in his productive years when he is earning, to insure himself against the ravages of illness in his old age.

Adjusted for inflation, Johnson’s $1.50 per month would be about $10.00 now.  So today, the Johnson promise, adjusted for inflation, would be a combined employer-employee Medicare cost of $20 per month for the “average worker.”  But, with the current Medicare payroll tax rate, and today’s average salary of  about $50,000,  the cost is $121 per month, six times what Johnson promised.

But it gets worse.  Johnson lied.   In no way does Medicare resemble insurance.  It’s just another welfare program that transfers income from workers to retirees.  Beginning on the first day in 1966 all revenue from the payroll tax was immediately spent on medical services for current retirees.  When each American reaches retirement age the taxes collected from those who are still working pay for his/her Medicare benefits.

As the chart shows Medicare revenue, from the payroll tax plus “insurance premiums” taken from seniors, isn’t nearly enough to support the program.  Deficits are projected to continue growing without end.

Because Medicare exists most Americans believe they are paying for and will be entitled to health care in retirement and do not invest in a genuine insurance program.  Few if any politicians are honorable enough to tell them the truth, that Medicare is a fraud.

Medicare is Unconstitutional and based entirely on lies.  But it cannot be undone without denying millions of people part or all of the health care they have been promised in exchange for their tax dollars. But it can not be sustained in its present form either.  So, a few courageous Congressmen, led by Budget Chairman Paul Ryan have presented a relatively simple and workable change that would stop the bleeding.

We’ll discuss the Ryan proposal in our next Medicare article.

The response from all the Democrats, some Republicans and most of the media has been an attempt to use the Medicare crisis to strengthen the liberal/progressive grip on government by claiming that Ryan’s intent is to leave seniors with no medical care at all.  This response is utterly devoid of honesty or concern for the future of Medicare.  It’s calculated to achieve one goal: scare and deceive voters, especially seniors, so they’ll re-elect Barack Obama and Senate Democrats.

Democrats support their position by pointing to polls that show majorities would rather continue Medicare as it is than accept major changes.  But these polls are dishonest.  They’re like asking a man who lost his job and then exhausted his savings if he would rather maintain his current life style without any income or find another job.

Continuing Medicare in its current form is not an option.  Major change is required to prevent draconian cuts in medical services in the future.  Treacherous, unprincipled politicians who recklessly fire up fear and emotion instead of dealing with the Medicare crisis deserve to be voted out of office at the earliest possible opportunity.

Back in October, 2009 in the midst of frenzied, back-room deal-making to cobble together bare majorities in the House and Senate to enact ObamaCare House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was asked to cite language in the Constitution authorizing the government to force individuals to buy health insurance.  Her arrogant, sneering response:

“Are you serious?”

A bit later Pelosi issued a press release called, “Health Insurance Reform Daily Mythbuster: Constitutionality of Health Insurance Reform.” It was typical of The Left’s abuse of the Constitution:

Reform opponents continue to spread myths about components of the [House Health Care Bill]  including the nonsensical claim that the federal government has no constitutionally valid role in reforming our health care system—apparently ignoring the validity of Medicare and other popular federal health reforms…As with Medicare and Medicaid, the federal government has the Constitutional power to reform our health care system.

This was an obvious obfuscation.  Constitutional objections from many sources, including Liberty Works, were not objections to “reform,” a happy word that could mean almost anything.  The actual objection is that most of the new government powers in ObamaCare are not authorized by the Constitution.

In the Next paragraph Pelosi recited her version of Constitutionality:

…the Constitution gives Congress broad power to regulate activities that have an effect on interstate commerce.  Congress has used this authority to regulate many aspects of American life, from labor relations to education to health care to agricultural production. Since virtually every aspect of the heath care system has an effect on interstate commerce, the power of Congress to regulate health care is essentially unlimited.

This claim of unlimited power shocked anyone who understood the history, language and intent of the Constitution.  A Congress with unlimited power was exactly the outcome the authors of the Constitution were determined to prevent.

The House and Senate went on to enact their audacious, 2,500 page monstrosity, including at least 51 new bureaucracies and hundreds of new powers assumed by the government in defiance of the Constitution.

The political-media establishment joined Pelosi in dismissing anyone who raised a Constitutional Objection as “silly” or “unqualified” or “ignorant of history.”

A lawsuit eventually joined by Twenty-six states was filed against ObamaCare and this week Judge Roger Vinson of the US District Court, Northern Florida issued an order that vindicated the silly, the unqualified and the ignorant.   He declared the individual mandate Unconstitutional.  And because the individual mandate is the scheme’s indispensable funding mechanism he declared the entire act Unconstitutional.

Government lawyers argued that the individual mandate was a Constitutional exercise of Congress’ power to regulate interstate commerce.  But in the Founders era the term “commerce” did not refer to production of goods or provision of services such as health care.  Commerce was buying and selling transactions, in this case across state lines.  The purpose of this clause was to empower Congress to prevent the states from erecting taxes or other barriers to transactions across state lines.

Beginning in the 1940s the Supreme Court issued rulings that changed the meaning of “commerce” from buying-selling transactions to virtually any activity that could be said to be economic.  Then the court expanded the power of Congress to regulate anything that had “a substantial effect” on commerce.  Since virtually any activity could be said to, however slightly or remotely “affect” commerce the protection the people now have from governmental interference in virtually any activity has been reduced to one, ambiguous word, “substantial.”

Judge Vinson reviewed the tortured interpretations of the Commerce clause that served to expand federal power far beyond what was contemplated by the Constitution’s authors.   Then he drew a line at using the Commerce Clause to justify a requirement that every person buy a government approved health plan.    Here’s just one of several excerpts from his opinion referencing the founders and the original meaning of the Constitution:

It would be a radical departure from existing case law to hold that Congress can regulate inactivity under the Commerce Clause. If it has the power to compel an otherwise passive individual into a commercial transaction with a third party merely by asserting — as was done in the Act — that compelling the actual transaction is itself “commercial and economic in nature, and substantially affects interstate commerce” [see Act § 1501(a)(1)], it is not hyperbolizing to suggest that Congress could do almost anything it wanted.

The section of the law he referenced does indeed seem to claim the individual mandate  justifies itself in that it will affect commerce.

It is difficult to imagine that a nation which began, at least in part, as the result of opposition to a British mandate giving the East India Company a monopoly and imposing a nominal tax on all tea sold in America would have set out to create a government with the power to force people to buy tea in the first place. If Congress can penalize a passive individual for failing to engage in commerce, the enumeration of powers in the Constitution would have been in vain for it would be difficult to perceive any limitation on federal power and we would have a Constitution in name only.  Surely this is not what the Founding Fathers could have intended.

We are on the leading edge of an historic change in national direction, away from perpetually expanding government, toward a new awareness of and respect for the Constitution.  Growing numbers of people are identifying themselves as “Constitutionalists” and are no longer willing to accept Presidents, Senators, Congressmen and bureaucrats who operate as if they have unlimited power with no Constitutional restraint.

The health care debate begins again with legislation to repeal ObamaCare.  This Debate will not be settled until politicians from both parties confront the truth.

What if a bunch of politicians tried to make themselves look extraordinarily clever and more compassionate than the rest of us by claiming that health care was “a right” and passing laws to provide medical services to folks who urgently needed them but didn’t have the means to pay?

What if those politicians contrived a way to force most of us to pay for those services, but outside the tax system?

What if those politicians didn’t disclose to us that we were generously providing needed medical services but instead told us the extra money we paid went to excessive corporate profits and unmerited CEO salaries?

What if they then claimed that patients were being denied the medical services we were paying for?

What if they insisted the only way to take care of folks who needed care but were unable to pay was for government to seize control of everyone’s health care and everyone’s health insurance?

Outrageous?  You bet.  But sadly, this is reality in America.

Health insurance used to cost much less because it was available only to people who were reasonably healthy and not in immediate need of expensive medical services.  After all, it was insurance, which is generally understood to be a way to reduce the risk of unexpected future costs.  Every reasonable person understands you can’t buy fire insurance for a house that’s already burning, or life insurance for someone who is terminally ill.

But then the progressive political movement began to prevail with the claim that health care was a right.

So how can that work?  How can I have “a right” to receive valuable services without violating the rights of whoever government forces to fund those services?

Government programs were established to ensure the “right” to health care but were soon swamped by growing numbers of people who had been led to believe they should not have to pay for insurance or set aside part of their income and forgo current consumption in order to be prepared to pay medical costs.  Contributions to charities that had once helped needy people with health care declined because government had assumed control.

Politicians like Barack Obama want credit for taking care of sick people who can’t afford medical care, for implementing a “right to health care,” but they don’t want to be blamed for raising taxes to cover the cost.  So they had to develop alternative funding mechanisms.

One of those mechanisms was requiring health insurance companies to cover people with pre-existing conditions, even if they were in immediate need of expensive treatments.   In the industry this is called “guaranteed issue.” When a health insurance company is required to insure someone who is already sick, it collects one monthly premium and then immediately pays out thousands, or tens of thousands for medical services.  To avoid bankruptcy the company must charge all its customers more -  a lot more.

To a great  extent guaranteed issue is already a reality.  A 1996 federal law, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), requires guaranteed issue for employee groups, and prohibits charging extra premiums for employees who have pre-existing conditions.  Several states also require insurance companies to comply with guaranteed issue for individual policies.

The recent rapid rise in the cost of health insurance over the past decade coincides with implementation of guaranteed issue requirements.

An additional consequence of guaranteed issue is the incentive for people to delay paying for insurance until they get sick because they can plunk down the first month’s premium to become “covered.”  Again, to remain solvent insurance companies must raise premiums even more, which drives even more healthy customers out, which results in even more premium increases.

The inevitable conclusion of this cycle will be the end of private health insurance.

With its requirement that every person must purchase a government approved health plan the 2,500 page ObamaCare bill is the progressive movement’s grudging acknowledgment that their “right to health care” is an impossibility, and the consequence of their laws and regulations is higher and higher health insurance costs born by fewer and fewer people still able to afford it.  ObamaCare screams the immutable truth that there can be no right to receive value without violating the rights of those against whom force is applied to pay for it.

What should we expect from political leaders now that the right to health care has been swept into the sinkhole of failed progressive ideas?

• An honest politician would openly admit there’s no free lunch, and requiring the insurance company to accept someone who is already sick isn’t about purging greed.
• An honest politician would admit guaranteed issue is simply a political scheme to transfer the cost of the sick person’s medical care to the rest of the company’s customers.
• An honest politician would admit guaranteed issue makes the insurance company the de facto tax collector for a de facto social program created by government decree.
• An honest politician would admit that guaranteed issue laws have caused the continuous premium increases, and the rising number of uninsured.

An genuine leader would admit that when politicians try to meet every need with clever legislation, the advertised benefits are more than offset by undisclosed negative consequences.

Of course those admissions would redirect The People’s anger from insurance companies to the politicians who enacted guaranteed issue laws, took credit for generously helping people who were sick, then lied about the cost.

A real leader would encourage Americans, the most generous and innovative people in human history, to voluntarily help, and to develop financial mechanisms to help those who could not qualify for insurance.  If the insurance industry were not so heavily regulated it could be more innovative.

There are plenty of examples of high quality health care being provided at little or no charge to patients.  One is the Shriners Hospitals for Children.  They accept children who need horrendously expensive treatments at no charge.  Here’s a quote from their website:

Children up to the age of 18 with orthopedic conditions, burns, spinal cord injuries and cleft lip and palate are eligible for admission and receive all care in a family-centered environment at no financial obligation to patients or families.

Liberty does work.  There’s no reason we The People can’t take care of our own without the imposition of command-and-control governmental systems that try to hide the costs and consequences.

Yet the political-media establishment continues to be driven by politically motivated, economic predictions.  Specious predictions are presented to the public as if they were knowable, proven facts.  The campaign for ObamaCare was a tsunami of absurd predictions of better health care for all of us, at lower cost to government, employers and individuals.

Health care hype wasn’t the first time the Obama Administration regaled us with confident, upbeat economic predictions.  The President began promoting his “stimulus” or recovery act back on January 10, 2009 with a report called “The Job Impact of  the American Recovery and Investment Act.”  Below are key predictions from that report, along with charts showing actual economic results after the first 13 months.

Obama’s Prediction:

A package in the range that the President-Elect has discussed is expected to create between three and four million jobs by the end of 2010…More than 90 percent of the jobs created are likely to be in the private sector.

Obama’s Prediction:

Certain industries, such as construction and manufacturing, are likely to experience particularly strong job growth under a recovery package that includes an emphasis on infrastructure, energy, and school repair.

\

One sector has enjoyed a 9% increase in jobs in the 13 months since the stimulus was enacted:

The Bottom Line

Utopian political predictions of better health care at lower cost are not believable.

It’s not too late to turn the ObamaCare ship around.  The various programs, bureaucracies, rules, regulations and costs are scheduled to  phase in over the next four years.  We must demand repeal of this hideous legislation, in its entirety, before grim economic reality replaces pie-in-the-sky predictions.

The Constitution once served as a firewall between us and those who would harness government power to control our lives.

But the progressives believe an elite few can make us better through massive bureaucratic control.  With a single word, “effect,” progressives empowered themselves to defy Constitutional limits on government power.  They now claim their power over us is, using Nancy Pelosi’s word, unlimited.

Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum, a former Congressman, announced that Florida and 8 other states are filing a lawsuit in Federal Court to overturn ObamaCare.  Quoting McCollum:

There are two basic principles here. Number one that Congress has exceeded its powers in terms of its requiring the individual mandate that anybody has to buy a health care policy or suffer a penalty of some sort, a fine or a tax. And number two that it violates the 10th Amendment rights of the states in that it goes far beyond an unfunded mandate and literally would cost the State of Florida alone billions of dollars . . . .”

We certainly wish Mr McCollum well.  And, this reasoning is fine as far as it goes. But he begins at a point of weakness.

We already know the argument the government will present to the court in defense of ObamaCare. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi gave us a preview back in November with a press release called, “Health Insurance Reform Daily Mythbuster: Constitutionality of Health Insurance Reform.” Her reasoning was typical of The Left’s abuse of the Constitution:

The 10th amendment to the U.S. Constitution states that the powers not delegated to the federal government by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states … or to the people.  But the Constitution gives Congress broad power to regulate activities that have an effect on interstate commerce.  Congress has used this authority to regulate many aspects of American life, from labor relations to education to health care to agricultural production. Since virtually every aspect of the heath care system has an effect on interstate commerce, the power of Congress to regulate health care is essentially unlimited.

This defiant declaration by the Speaker of the House, that the authors of the Constitution intended to grant Congress “unlimited” power over an industry or sector is heresy.  Unlimited government power was abhorrent to The Founders.  It was exactly the outcome they were determined to prevent.

But, over the past century politicians and judges and Supreme Court Justices have brazenly violated the clear language of the Constitution and turned the vision of The Founders on its head, largely through deliberate misinterpretation of what is known as the commerce clause:

“The Congress shall have Power To…regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes;”

A review of the Federalist Papers and other contemporary writings makes clear that the modern interpretation of this clause as expressed above by Pelosi is not even close to the original meaning of the text.

In the Founders era the term “Commerce” did not include productive activities such as manufacturing, or agriculture or providing medical services.  Commerce meant buying or selling transactions.

The intent of this clause was to grant Congress the power to make rules governing the manner by which people may buy, sell or exchange goods from state to state, in order to prevent individual states from erecting unnecessary barriers to transactions across state lines.   James Madison wrote in Federalist Paper #22 of problems caused by state governments that were attempting to interfere with commerce:

The interfering and unneighborly regulations of some States, contrary to the true spirit of the Union, have, in different instances, given just cause of umbrage and complaint to others, and it is to be feared that examples of this nature, if not restrained by a national control, would be multiplied and extended till they became not less serious sources of animosity and discord than injurious impediments to the intcrcourse between the different parts of the Confederacy.

Madison cited as a negative example the German empire that, similar to America, was at the time an association of semi- independent states:

The commerce of the German empire is in continual trammels from the multiplicity of the duties which the several princes and states exact upon the merchandises passing through their territories, by means of which the fine streams and navigable rivers with which Germany is so happily watered are rendered almost useless.  Though the genius of the people of this country might never permit this description to be strictly applicable to us, yet we may reasonably expect, from the gradual conflicts of State regulations, that the citizens of each would at length come to be considered and treated by the others in no better light than that of foreigners and aliens.

The basis for Ms. Pelosi’s arrogant claim of unlimited power, is a series of Supreme Court rulings, beginning with Wickard v. Filburn, 317 U.S. 111 (1942).  During the Great Depression Congress had imposed limits on crop production, in an effort to help farming businesses at the expense of everyone else by artificially reducing food supply, which would cause food prices to rise.

Mr. Filburn was fined by the government for violating the limit by growing “too much” wheat.  He argued that his entire wheat crop was consumed on his own farm, mostly as chicken feed, and was not sold to anyone and therefore could not be considered interstate commerce.  Thus, he concluded the federal government had no Constitutional authority to regulate his wheat production.

But the government argued that Filburn affected interstate commerce by growing his own wheat rather than buying it on the open, interstate market.  The court took the government’s side and the rest is history.

The Obama-Pelosi-Progressive view is that any idea a politician can conceive is Constitutional as long as it involves an “effect” on interstate commerce. Since it could be argued that almost any human activity may, however remotely, affect interstate commerce, we are now told that The Founders meant for Congress to have, using Pelosi’s words, “unlimited power” to intervene and control any aspect of our lives.

Progressives claim they can harness the power of government to stop you from doing anything, or make you do anything they wish, because anything you do or don’t do has an effect on interstate commerce.

Attorney General McCollum must begin his Constitutional challenge to ObamaCare with the expectation that the court will be biased toward following the  “effects interstate Commerce” precedent.  Thus, instead of arguing the obvious, that ObamaCare’s 3500 pages of arcane regulation, taxes, fees, fines, and levies is a blatant affront to the Constitution, he is reduced relative hair splitting over the requirement that individuals buy insurance, and the cost to the states.

The Bottom Line

The only way to stop government encroachment in our lives is to elect people to Congress who will obey the Constitution, even though the Supreme Court has ruled that they are no longer required to.

Well, the Democrats don’t see them as victims any longer.  Now they’re seen as deadbeats who are “costing the system” by not insuring themselves. ObamaCare legislation includes:

a) Requirement To Maintain Minimum Essential Coverage-

An applicable individual shall for each month beginning after 2013 ensure that the individual, and any dependent of the individual who is an applicable individual, is covered under minimum essential coverage for such month.

Note that this requirement that every individual acquire health insurance would begin two months after the 2012 election, when Obama hopes to win a second term, partly because we voters are expected to  have accepted, and even come to appreciate ObamaCare.  And, “minimum essential coverage,” includes all the coverage mandates that the legislation empowers the Secretary of Health and Human Services to determine, through political processes, will be required.

Next the legislation imposes a financial penalty on anyone who doesn’t have insurance every single month:

(b) Shared Responsibility Payment

‘(1) IN GENERAL- If an applicable individual fails to meet the requirement of subsection (a) for 1 or more months during any calendar year beginning after 2013, then, except as provided in subsection (d), there is hereby imposed a penalty with respect to the individual in the amount determined under subsection (c).

‘(2) INCLUSION WITH RETURN- Any penalty imposed by this section with respect to any month shall be included with a taxpayer’s return under chapter 1 for the taxable year which includes such month.

‘(3) PAYMENT OF PENALTY- If an individual with respect to whom a penalty is imposed by this section for any month–

‘(c) Amount of Penalty- $750…

ObamaCare assigns to the IRS the role of enforcer, making sure every last citizen pays his monthly bill to a health insurance company, every month.

(c) Notification of Non-enrollment- Not later than June 30 of each year, the Secretary of the Treasury, acting through the Internal Revenue Service and in consultation with the Secretary of Health and Human Services, shall send a notification to each individual who files an individual income tax return and who is not enrolled in minimum essential coverage (as defined in section 5000A of the Internal Revenue Code of 1986).

If you like your doctor, you’re going to be able to keep your doctor. If you like your plan, keep your plan.

I don’t believe we should give government or the insurance companies more control over health care in America. I think it’s time to give you, the American people, more control over your health. (Applause.)

Let’s break this down and examine the component parts individually:

Can you keep your doctor? A survey of physicians taken last summer by Investors Business Daily found that 45% “would consider leaving their practices or taking early retirements if the Democrats’ reform became law.”  In another poll taken by Medicus, 30% of physicians said they’d quit the medical profession if ObamaCare passed.  You can’t keep your doctor if he quits! It seems likely from these surveys that 30% – 45% of us will have to find different doctors – if we can.

Can you keep your current health plan if you like it? Section 1302 of ObamaCare is titled: “Essential Health Benefits Requirements.”  It empowers the Secretary of Health and Human Services to determine what benefits are “essential” and thus must be included in every health plan.  To the extent the Secretary determines your plan is out of compliance with his/her opinions of “essential benefits,” your plan will have to change.  It won’t be the same plan.

If your plan has an annual or lifetime cap on the amount the company is required to pay (as most plans do) that cap will immediately become illegal, and your premium will most likely have to increase to compensate the company for greater cost and risk.

These changes would occur within the first year.  Later on, there would be even more mandated changes that would further change and/or increase the cost of your plan.  The name of your plan may not change, but it won’t be the same plan you now have and wish to keep.

Would the ObamaCare give “you, the American people” more control over your health, vs government or the insurance company? Of course not!  The legislation is some 2,700 pages of new government imposed controls, mandates, and regulations!  The word “shall” – as in “must” or “required to” – appears over 3,000 times!  There are some 51 new bureaucracies created for the purpose of writing and enforcing government regulations.  Of all the claims made by Obama and his health care buddies, this is probably the most preposterous.

The debate over ObamaCare would have ended before it began if members of the House and Senate remembered the oath they took to defend the Constitution, which does not authorize the federal government to provide or regulate health care or health insurance.

But unfortunately, the threat of ObamaCare is real because Congress and the President simply ignore the Constitution.

But setting aside the Constitution, a century of experience with ever expanding government should convince even the most naive citizens that Congress could not, by writing a single, oceanic bill that implements bureaucratic supervision and control of every aspect of health insurance, ensure the idyllic health care outcomes promised by the President and his cheer leaders.

Democrat leaders in the house hope to pass the 2,700 page bill that passed by the Senate in an atmosphere of desperate urgency, last Christmas Eve.  Then, they hope to pass a supplemental bill of amendments that “fix” the Senate bill. Or, they may disregard the Constitutional requirement that they pass the Senate bill first and simply assert that by passing the supplemental bill the house “deems” the Senate bill passed as well!

If ObamaCare were enacted least 55 new commissions, agencies, and bureaucracies would first write and then enforce thousands of pages of new regulations mandated by the legislation.  None of those bureaucracies would be accountable to doctors or patients. Nobody can imagine all the unintended consequences as the various programs, mandates, taxes and subsidies are phased in over a seven year period.

The President continues to claim we can keep our current insurance or Medicare coverage.  But the legislation begins with new mandates and rules that will change every health insurance policy, increasing the cost of most. It cuts Medicare funding and  establishes a permanent board whose mandate is to continue to find ways to cut Medicare, year after year, forever.

Obama brags about about favorable estimates of deficit reduction from the Congressional Budget Office. But Harry Reid gamed the system to get those estimates.   The bill schedules higher taxes to support new programs several years before the programs and their costs are scheduled to begin. And, the CBO warned that their estimates were “subject to substantial uncertainty.”

Again, how can anyone, even one who wants a more powerful government, believe this process will yield anything but bureaucratic bedlam?

Update March 21:  Obviously, we were wrong.  The House has passed the Senate version, and ObamaCare and it is now the law of the land.

March 13, 2010:

The conflicts and lack of trust within the their own Party make it impossible for President Obama and the Democrats to enact their sweeping government take-over of health care without violating the Constitution.  In an earlier time, before citizens had the means to scrutinize Congress as closely as we now have, politicians got away with extra-Constitutional schemes like Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid and Barack Obama are now contemplating.

But we don’t believe they can pull it off in the era of the Internet, talk radio, cable news channels, and the Tea Party movement.

The Constitution’s procedural requirements for enacting new laws is clear.  Both the House and the Senate must pass exactly the same legislation, and then it must be signed by the President.  More often than not, four steps are required:

1. The Senate passes its version of new legislation.
2. The House of Representatives passes passes its version of the same legislation.
3. Since the bills are not exactly the same, as required by the Constitution, members of the House and Senate meet together in a conference committee to edit and combine the two bills.  The goal of the conference committee is to write language that can attract enough votes in each body to pass the legislation.
4. The conference committee version goes back to the House and the Senate.  Each body must pass it, as written, with no amendments.

If the conference committee version cannot attract enough votes in each body the legislation dies.

For ObamaCare, steps 1 and 2 have been completed.  But the the Senate version was passed on Christmas Eve when the Democrats had the required sixty votes.  Now, since Republican Scott Brown was elected, the Democrats have only 59 votes and thus could not pass any conference version.  Even before Scott Brown, passage of the Senate version required the now infamous “special deals” for individual Senators that could not survive the conference committee process.  Thus, the Democratic leadership ruled out the conference committee process weeks ago.

This chaotic health care debate has exposed two fundamental weakness in the Democrat party:

1. It won it’s substantial majority in the House of Representatives by fielding candidates in swing districts who campaigned on Conservative themes that party leaders don’t believe in.  But it has been attempting to govern as if it had a sweeping mandate to dramatically expand government’s size and power.  The basic concept of ObamaCare, that absolute government control will bring about better results than the status quo, simply does not sell in those swing districts.
2. It is largely a coalition of disparate and unpopular causes that manage to stifle their differences just long enough to win elections, but not long enough to govern.  These causes include:

• • Greater rights, privileges, and public benefits for illegal immigrants;
  • Gay marriage and public school indoctrination in favor of homosexuality;
  • Publicly funded abortion on demand for any female of any age without condition;
  • Maintaining and expanding the benefits enjoyed by union members, especially teachers and government employees;
  • Extreme environmentalism, including efforts to reduce the birth rate in order to reduce the size of the human population;
  • Enriching trial lawyers by passing legislation that creates pretexts for more lawsuits;
  • Shrinking the U.S. military and blanket opposition to any military operation.

At least half of Democrat House members owe their careers to, and cannot vote in favor of a bill that looks like it may weaken the supporters of one of these causes.  Some examples:

• One liberal Democrat, Luiz Gutierrez of Illinois, who would otherwise be a reliable vote in favor of government health care, told CNN he would vote no because the bill, as now written would deny benefits to illegal immigrants.
• Approximately 12 Democrats are pro-life and so far have been unwilling to vote for the Senate version because it would allow government funding of abortion.  But many more Democrats are aligned with the abortion-on-demand movement and are loathe to vote for any restriction on government funding.
• Representative Bart Stupak, who has been the most outspoken pro-life Democrat told reporters that he was urged by Democrat leaders to vote in favor of public funding of abortion because reducing the number of babies born would reduce government spending on health care.
• The Senate version of the bill includes a tax on the most generous and expensive health plans that are usually found in unionized organizations.  House members who are beholden to unions are unwilling to vote for a bill that includes this tax.
• Some Democrats agree with Republicans that curtailing lawsuits and limiting money judgments to actual losses suffered would decrease the cost of Health Care.  But most Democrats are too much indebted to the trial lawyers to go along.

Democrat leaders have been trying to sell House members on a two step process that begins with the House passing the Senate version as written.  The President would then sign the Senate version and it would become the law of the land.

The second step would be pass a bill of amendments that would somehow “fix” the Senate version so it would no longer offend house members trying to be loyal to the causes that support them.  That second bill would then have to pass both the House and the Senate.  Democrats claim they can use a process called “reconciliation” in the Senate that would require only 51 votes for passage.  However, that claim is very much in dispute.

Reconciliation, if used for this legislation, would violate the rules of the Senate, which would be a violation of the Constitution.  Besides, it is doubtful that a bill that satisfied enough House Democrats could win even 51 Senate Democrat votes.

Another idea being floated by House leadership would be to pass the “fixit” bill under a contrived “rule” that would deem the Senate version also passed, but without a vote.  Obviously, this would violate the Constitution.

In reality, House Democrats who vote in favor of the Senate version, would have to do so either because it is acceptable as is to them and to the pressure groups who support them, or because they have to trust leaders to write a fixit bill that will be acceptable and can actually be enacted by both bodies.  And that would take a lot of naive trust, by sleazy politicians in other sleazy politicians!

Saturday morning it was the President’s “weekly address,” posted in video form on the White House website.  President Obama began with:

This week I asked Congress to hold a final vote on reform that will give families and businesses more control over their health care…

As anyone who hasn’t been in a coma for the past year knows, the central purpose of each of the two, 2,500 page health care bills now pending in Congress is to give government not just more, but total control over health care.  The idea that families and businesses would have more control is perhaps the most preposterous of a constellation of health care deceptions.

This comes after nearly a year of debate, as well as a seven hour summit with Democrats and Republicans where we had a public and substantive discussion on health care.

Wow!  After Congressional Democrats and their twenty-something staffers spent months writing massive bills in closed sessions the President actually allowed a few elected Republicans in the room for seven whole hours!  Are we supposed to be impressed?

Since then I’ve said I’m willing to incorporate some ideas offered by Republicans and we’re eliminating special provisions that had no place in health care reform.

Like most of the public communication from the Obama Administration, this sentence was designed to deceive those who don’t have the time or inclination to monitor the political process every day and keep track of the details.  “I’ve said” is simply meaningless.

Democrats in Congress have already embarked on a two-step legislative strategy that does not include any Republican input.

Step 1: The House is to pass the 2,500 page Senate version with no changes, even though scores of House Democrats are dead set against several of its provisions.  House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has spent the past two weeks twisting arms among her 255 Democrats in a so-far futile effort to round up the 216 votes needed for passage.   If she finally succeeds…

Step 2: Write a bill of amendments to reconcile enough of the differences between House and Senate versions to pass the the Senate with 51 Democrat votes and the House with 216 Democrat votes.

After step 1 the President will sign the Senate Bill and it will become the law of the land, even if step 2 never happens.  So far, Pelosi does not have enough votes for step 1, because House Democrats  don’t trust Senate Democrats to complete step two.

Even as he talked of incorporating Republican ideas Obama knew that if any Republican ideas were added to the bill of amendments, even more Democrats would vote no, guaranteeing failure.

Regardless of Obama’s protestations, the health care stalemate is not due to Republican opposition.  It’s due to lack of agreement among his own Democrats.

Previously: Prelude Act I Act II

During Act II, the Health Care Summit, Representative Joe Barton articulated the principles that have guided Republicans’ response to the Democrats’ massive health insurance and health care regulation bills:

I do think, though, that there is a fundamental difference in the vision that you and your friends on the majority have put forward, and the vision that myself and those of us in the minority have put forward.  It’s the fundamental role of government.

We believe that we should use free markets to empower people and give them choices. And for the best of intentions, yourself and most of your allies in the Democratic Party seem to believe that the government, either through a mandate or through a regulatory requirement, knows better and will do better for health care for most Americans.

In his weekly address, released on Saturday, President Obama kicked off Act III of the Melodrama, an effort to establish in the mind of the public the notion that ObamaCare, as written, is the product of faultless wisdom, and there can be no legitimate disagreement.   He began by attempting to demean Republicans like Joe Barton:

We need to move past the bickering and the game-playing that holds us back and blocks progress for the American people.

Obama often resorts to this sort of rhetoric, dismissing principled dissent as mere “bickering and game-playing,” as if everything he puts forward were undeniably flawless and there could be no justification for disagreement.  At the Summit his position was that since Republicans share his concern about rising insurance premiums and costs to government they should support the Democrats’ massive government take-over, as if there were only one, self-evident strategy for dealing with those problems.

Smearing Republicans is futile in any event because the legislative log jam has nothing to do with Republican objections.  Democrats began have such commanding majorities in both houses that Republicans are nearly irrelevant.  In truth, ObamaCare could have become law months ago were it not for Obama’s inability to fully unite Democrats behind it.

It’s hard to understand how this exercise, inviting Republican input and then dismissing that input as bickering, will move the President any closer to his goal.  But maybe The Greatest Politician Ever knows something the rest of us don’t.  All we can do is wait and watch.