Back in February Judge Gladys Kessler upheld ObamaCoup, writing, in part:
This second aspect of the health care market distinguishes the ACA from Plaintiffs’ hypothetical scenario in which Congress enacts a law requiring individuals to purchase automobiles in an attempt to regulate the transportation market. Even assuming that all individuals require transportation in the same sense that all individuals require medical services, automobile manufacturers are not required by law to give cars to people who show up at their door in need of transportation but without the money to pay for it. Similarly, food and lodging are basic necessities, but the Court is not aware of any law requiring restaurants or hotels to provide either free of charge.
It should be emphasized that this distinction is not merely a useful limiting principle on Congress’s Commerce Clause power. Rather, it is a basic, relevant fact about the operation of the health care market which is critical to understanding the ACA’s efforts to reform the health care system. The requirement placed upon medical providers by federal law to care for the sick and injured without recompense is part of the cost-shifting problem that Congress sought to redress by enacting the ACA. When a supplier is obligated by law to produce goods or services for free, there is bound to be a substantial effect on market prices if consumers’ behavior results in that obligation’s frequent invocation.
ummm...
...ok
To me this doesn't strike me as a reason to mandate health care insurance but a reason to question why doctors--of all other classes and professions within the US--are compelled by law to provide services against their will without compensation.
I thought we had a 13th Amendment or something.
Moreover, this is an asinine line of reasoning. The people who aren't paying for health care still are not paying for health care. The mandate doesn't touch them, it only compels those with the means pay to do so on behalf of other people or face imprisonment and fines.
What it boils down to is: a law was passed compelling doctors to work for free, that law is then used to compel the balance of the population that is capable of footing the bill to do so.
All the while the people who started the entire process--those who cannot pay (or misrepresent themselves as such)--continue undisturbed by any of these events.
I orignally wanted to swing at this from a different angle but this struck me as so blinkered it trumped what I wanted to say.
