Saturday, October 26, 2013

If you like it

Senator Ron Johnson (R-Wisconsin) has announced he will introduce an ”If You Like Your Health Plan, You Can Keep It Act” bill next week. According to Senator Johnson’s press release:

One of the most important promises made by President Obama and Democrat congressional leadership to promote the Affordable Care Act was that Americans who were satisfied with their health plans could keep them.  That promise has been broken.  More than a million Americans have been notified that the plans they like with the coverage they have chosen have been canceled.  Millions more Americans will have the plans of their choice canceled in months to come.

Americans want the freedom to choose their own plans and want to be in control of their own health care.  They don’t want Obamacare destroying what they have and what they like.  They don’t want their personal choices regarding their health plans and their families’ health plans canceled by Obamacare.

The “If You Like Your Health Plan, You Can Keep It Act” will amend the law to make Obamacare live up to the promises of the politicians who sold the plan to the American public.  I will file the bill in the coming week and hope to garner support from fellow Senators of both parties who truly want to make sure President Obama honors his promise that every American has the freedom to keep his or her own health care plan.

I hope you’ll contact you Senators and Representative and ask them to co-sponsor this bill or at least support it. If you’re not sure how to contact your Congressmen, here’s how to find that information:

Find Your Senator

Find Your Representative

To me, this bill is worth supporting for two reasons. First, it’s the right thing to do for people whose current insurance has been cancelled and who will be significantly negatively affected by having to spend more and/or get less when they are left with no options but Obama-approved health insurance policies. In other words, it’s the right thing to do for people who are getting a raw deal.

Second, it asks a version of what I believe is the most important question in the ObamaCare issue, one that should be asked of the President, Secretary Sebelius, every Congressman who voted for this bill, and every one of our fellow citizens who support ObamaCare: Who the hell do you think you are, to tell me what to buy with my own money?

5 comments:

E Hines said...

[T]his bill is worth supporting....

I'll have to see the details of it, first. As someone once said, it's insufficient just to have ideas that are to be filed "later" (or "in the coming week" as Johnson has it).

A major reason all those policy cancellations are occurring is because, under Obamacare, they're illegal. How Johnson handles that will be critical. The health insurance industry already is between a rock and a hard place, courtesy the original lack of a free market and the Obamacare prairie house room addition (not to mix metaphors, or anything). There's no need to start jamming spears in to the gap between the rock and hard place.

As to it asks a version of what I believe is the most important question in the ObamaCare issue, one that should be asked of the President, Secretary Sebelius, every Congressman who voted for this bill, and every one of our fellow citizens who support ObamaCare: Who the hell do you think you are, to tell me what to buy with my own money?

See Mead v Holder in which Judge Gladys Kessler ruled the the very thoughts of a man, as they impact commerce, are regulable under the Commerce Clause. See, also, NFIB v Sebelius in which the Supremes ruled that contra the thrust of your question, the Feds do have the authority vis-a-vis Obamacare to...encourage...you to do certain things with your money, else be taxed for not. This, in fact, is well established in our tax law, since nearly all of it is aimed at social engineering and not simply at funding the government.

Eric Hines

Elise said...

Both the lawsuits you cite are about ObamaCare. Since my point is that ObamaCare is wrong on the idea of requiring me to buy what they dictate, that's, hmm, circular, I think.

Also, whatever the courts, including the Supreme Court, may say, I say that, while the Feds have the power to make me buy something, they do not have the right to do so.

The Federal government requiring me to buy what they dictate is new. It has in the past forbidden me to do or buy things; it has taken my money in taxes; but it has not before required me to buy a specific product.

E Hines said...

The Feds have the right to do so because We the People gave them that right by, among other things, creating a Supreme Court with the authority to rule on the legitimacy of Congress-made (at a remove, people-made) law.

If we want to restrict that right (to tell us what we can or cannot, or must or must not do or buy), or remove it entirely, that's on us to correct the terms of our government or, better, the terms of our social contract.

Eric Hines

Elise said...

I disagree although our disagreement may have to do with what we mean by "have the right". The Feds have legal approval for what they are doing; that does not mean they have the right to do it.

Elise said...

And besides, my original question had nothing to do with having the right. It had to do with having the sheer unmitigated gall.