Way back in January of 2008, before Obamacare was even a pipe dream, I wrote a post about how a nationalized health care system in the United States would be unconstitutional. Yesterday a Federal Judge, as you can see here at the Washington Times, ruled Obamacare to be -- you guessed it-- unconstitutional.
So as of right now the law is void. The Judge did not give permission for public officials to continue implementing the law while it is being appealed. So if Obama does decide to continue pushing it forward, he's doing it against the will of the courts and the will of the people.
The health care system is due for some improvement, yet 60% of Americans have said they do not want what is being forced on them by Obamacare. Likewise, the courts now -- two of them -- have determined that it is unconstitutional for the Federal Government to force people to buy something.
The judge ruled Obamacare cannot be tweaked either. He ruled we can't tweak what we like and throw out what we don't like. As he reads the law, it will not function without the mandate all Americans must buy health care.
In his ruling, Federal Judge Roger Vincent wrote the following:
"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."This is a brilliant statement. It pretty much sums up the law to a tea (pun intended).
Some of my readers might say Obamacare was not about tea, it was about healthcare. Yet it is. It is because if the Federal Government has the power to force us to buy tea, then they can force us to buy electric cars. If they can force us to buy health care, some politician somewhere will find a way to force us to buy salt free food.
It's a dangerous slippery slope. Yet the slope doesn't matter, because the 10th Amendment simply states that all that is not covered in this constitution is left to the states to decide. In this way, the states are allowed to make a health care law, and Massachusetts did this.
That's the neat thing about Federalism, is that the states can experiment in this way. If you don't like an experiment going on in Massachusetts you can move to Michigan. If you don't like an experiment in Michigan you can move to Florida.
Likewise, if Michigan decides it likes the health care program that Massachusetts has, then the people of Michigan can decide to adapt a similar program. That's how Federalism works. Yet the Federal government cannot force the states to buy into a nationalized health care.
The whole purpose for the Constitution to be written this way is to protect state rights. It's to protect individual rights. In this way, the U.S. can adjust to new ideas and can adjust to the new way the world is heading. A U.S. state can adapt a health care system like Canada has, yet the Federal government cannot.
A fellow blogger told me the health care system in Canada is great, and the U.S. should adapt it. If the U.S. doesn't adapt it, then the U.S. is only hurting itself. Yet the U.S. has 300 million people to Canada's 27 million. In this way, Canada is like a state.
What works in Canada might work in Massachusetts, yet what works in Canada might not work in the entire U.S. because we have 50 states with 50 different cultures. Forcing nationalized healthcare on all the U.S. would be like trying to force Catholicism on all of Europe and the Middle East.
You cannot force what you think is ideal on everyone, because your definition of ideal might not be my definition of ideal. You can make a law I have to believe in Satan, yet you can't force me to worship him -- I wouldn't. You'd have chaos. You'd have anarchy.
The easier solution is to let each country, each state, decide for itself. What works for one state may not work for them all. What works in one country will not work for them all.
This whole idea of Federalism shows in part the brilliance of the founding fathers. For one thing they knew that the Constitution would not be passed by some states if they were not allowed to retain their sovereignty. Some states, believe it or not, had church run schools when the Constitution was passed. They would not have signed onto it if they were forced by the new Constitution to buy into a government run school system we have today
And thus is the reason the founding fathers created Federalism. And thus is the reason that nationalized health care is unconstitutional. It's not that they didn't want the people to have a universal health care system sometime in the future. It's because if such a system is devised, they wanted the people to decide what to do, not the Federal government.
It's just another one of those checks and balance things. The executive branch doesn't have the power to tell the judicial what to do, and it also cannot tell the legislature what to do either. Likewise, it cannot force something (like health care) on the people either -- if it's for our own good or not.
This has nothing to do with whether I or this judge support Obama care. I have not written in this post whether I like Obamacare or not. That is not the point of this post. Also by writing this I am not implying I don't think the health care system needs to be fixed. I'm also not implying whether or not I like Obama. That's irrelevant to this post.
This post also does not discuss whether or not Obamacare costs too much or will create or destroy jobs. That's not at issue here, at least in this post. The point here is the legality of nationalized health care, of forcing it on everyone. Of making a law that in order to be a U.S. citizen you have to buy something.
Judge Vincent might very well support a national health care system. Yet his opinion doesn't matter. His job as a federal judge is to uphold the law. And since the Constitution does not allow for the Federal government to make a law regarding health care, this law should be shot down on merit alone.
The health care system in the U.S. is messed up. I write about this on my blog all the time. Yet the problem is not nurses and doctors and respiratory therapist, the problem is people who don't have a clue how the health care system runs, people sitting in a leather chair in Washington, telling us what to do.
This has nothing to do with republican or democrat, or liberal or conservative. It has to do with upholding the law. And it is my humble opinion that Judge Roger Vincent of the northern district of Florida did just that -- uphold the law. Two-thirds of America agree with the judge.
No comments:
Post a Comment