“In response to public opposition to enactment of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), President Obama assured Americans that if they were happy with their current health insurance, nothing in the PPACA would force them to change their coverage. This promise has been broken. Not only does the PPACA itself require changes in existing coverage, but regulations issued by the Administration further undercut the ability of Americans to continue with their current insurance plans. The rules are arbitrary and confusing.”
“A generation ago, New York governor Mario Cuomo was an Italian-American facsimile of Barack Obama: an unapologetic, eloquent spokesman for modern liberalism. Many on the Left regret to this day that he didn’t run for President in 1992, leaving the field instead to a centrist named Bill Clinton.
Last month, Mario’s son, Andrew, was installed into the Governor’s Mansion in Albany. And Andrew is getting some pretty lavish praise from…National Review and the Wall Street Journal?”
“Most fundamentally, the system we are proposing requires Washington to abandon most of the command-and-control aspects of the law as written. It steers away from nanny-state paternalism by assuming, recognizing and reinforcing the dignity of all our citizens and their right to make health care’s highly personal decisions for themselves.”
“The measure repealing the 1099 mandate may itself increase the deficit slightly. It will reduce federal tax collections by $17 billion, and the offsetting spending cuts are highly questionable. This vote’s real significance, however, is that it shows why ObamaCare’s entitlement spending would survive the political process while its revenue-raising provisions would not.”
“Fairly stated, this is the conservative constitutional argument: Health care for all is a good cause. But if, in the name of that noble goal, you construe Congress’s power to regulate interstate commerce so broadly as to encompass individual choices that have never previously been thought of as commercial, much less interstate, there would be nothing left of the commerce clause’s restraints on Congress’s power. And then, the argument goes, Congress would be free to impose far more intrusive mandates.”
“What would you call a health-insurance program that has worse health outcomes for cancer and heart disease than Medicare or private insurance, that pays doctors and specialists so little that they often refuse to see patients, and that’s driving state budgets into bankruptcy? If you’re the Obama administration, apparently, you call it a success and make it the cornerstone of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, the health-care-reform legislation passed in March 2010 that is better known as Obamacare.”
“The Obama administration attempted to cloak an unprecedented and unsupportable exercise of federal power in the guise of a run-of-the-mill Commerce Clause regulation. When the weakness of that theory was exposed, it retreated to the Necessary and Proper Clause and the taxing power. Judge Vinson’s decisive rejection of all these theories is another significant victory for individual liberty—the ultimate purpose of federalism—and it lays the intellectual groundwork for every decision on the mandate yet to come.”
“The Senate on Wednesday voted down a repeal of President Obama’s healthcare law in a 47-51 party-line vote.
The vote came two weeks to the day the Republican House voted 245-189 to repeal the law, and just days after a federal judge ruled Obama’s signature legislative achievement is unconstitutional. Republicans have vowed to carry the fight forward, saying they will seek to de-fund the law as it is implemented. The GOP also has promised Wednesday’s repeal vote will not be the last in this Congress.”
“The Senate Judiciary Committee held its first-ever hearing on the constitutionality of ObamaCare yesterday, and talk about a barn door closing. After federal Judge Roger Vinson struck down on Monday the entire statute in a suit brought by 26 states, some states are already suspending any efforts to comply with its regulations and mandates.”
“President Obama and his congressional allies want to create the perception that Obamacare is a done deal, and that Republicans need to get over it. But the events of the past week show quite clearly that that’s far from the reality. Since its passage, Obamacare has rested on shaky ground, owing to the heavy-handed tactics used to jam it through Congress against the wishes of a majority of the electorate. But now, after the Florida court decision and the vote in the Senate on repeal, Obamacare is more vulnerable than ever — politically, legally, and operationally.”