cornball trampler: Don't Need This Steenkin Health Insurance

By Raoul Lowery Contreras

Pilar Marrero of the large Spanish-language newspaper, La Opinion of Los Angeles, interviewed me in 2000 in my capacity as an official Surrogate Speaker for Presidential candidate George W. Bush.

She asked what Hispanics (that needed government-provided health care) should do as Governor Bush wasn?t proposing health care for anyone much less poor Hispanics. I answered, simply, they have someone to vote for, Al Gore.

Bush won. Universal government health care did not materialize under Bush though Medicare was supplemented with a popular drug program. It took the election of Barack Obama for health care to be addressed seriously.

Obama failed to lead and allowed Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to usurp his health care bill that, of course, did not address the finest health care in the world or its escalating costs but rather was a health insurance bill riddled with taxes, fines and penalties.

Most staff in Congress are lawyers, despite that the health insurance bill they produced probably does not pass constitutional muster which is amazing because it is rumored that our Harvard Law honors graduate President who moonlighted as an instructor of Constitutional law at U. of Chicago Law approved/signed this abomination.

The American people have never supported the total 2700-page law; a majority of states sued the government to stop the law and a majority of the House that was elected in 2010 was elected on its opposition to the Obama health care law, Obamacare.

Here are the pertinent questions from four of the five justices that will probably vote to reject the law:

JUSTICE KENNEDY: ?Can you create commerce in order to regulate it??
CHIEF JUSTICE ROBERTS: ??can the government require you to buy a cell phone because that would facilitate responding when you need emergency services? You can just dial 911 no matter where you are??
JUSTICE ALITO: ?Do you think there is a, a market for burial services??
JUSTICE ALITO: ?You can get burial insurance. You can get health insurance. Most people are going to need health care. Almost everybody, everybody is going to be buried or cremated at some point. What?s the difference??
JUSTICE KENNEDY: ??this (the Obamacare individual mandate) is a step beyond what our (previous) cases have allowed, the affirmative duty to act to go into commerce. If that is so, do you (Obama and Congressional Democrats) not have a heavy burden of justification? I understand that we must presume laws are constitutional, but, even so, when you are changing the relation of the individual to the government in this, what we can stipulate is, I think, a unique way, do you not have a heavy burden of justification to show authorization under the Constitution??
JUSTICE SCALIA: ?Could you define the market ? everybody has to buy food sooner or later, so you define the market as food, therefore, everybody is in the market; therefore, you can make people buy broccoli.?
JUSTICE SCALIA: ?There was no doubt that was what regulated (in previous cases of the commerce clause) was commerce. And here you?re regulating somebody who isn?t covered. By the way, I don?t agree with you that the relevant market here is health care. You?re not regulating health care. You?re regulating insurance. It?s the insurance market that you?re addressing and you?re saying that some people who are not in it must be in it and that?s ? that?s difference from regulating in any manner commerce that already exists out there.?

These questions focus for everyone, including constitutional scholars, on the issues.

Is an individual who does not buy health insurance really affect commerce? If so, can the government order an individual to buy health insurance and be fined if he/she doesn?t? If the government can order me to buy health insurance even if I don?t want to, can it order me to buy cell phones because people can benefit from a quick emergency 911 call from almost anywhere? As we all die, can the government order us to all buy private burial insurance so family or local government doesn?t have to pay for funerals? As we all eat, can the government order us to only buy and eat healthy foods; can it order us to buy broccoli?

Constitutional teacher/scholar Obama probably says yes to these questions. I take the opposite position. My Constitutional Law professor, Dr. Ned Joy, is turning over in his grave, not because he would reject Obamacare but because we are even faced with this legal problem.

It appears that the Court will rule Obamacare unconstitutional and that Congress will have to fight more battles of Big Government versus the individual American.

As President Obama has painfully learned, elections have consequences. 2010?s Republican victories erased Obama?s chances to cover the USA with a European-brand of governance. Obamacare and Obama == failure.

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Raoul Lowery Contreras?(1941) was born in Mexico, raised in the USA. Former U.S. Marine, athlete, Dean?s List at San Diego State. Professional political consultant and California Republican Party official(1963-65)?Television news commentator, radio talk show host?published Op-Ed writer (1988 to present)?author of 12 books (as of 1-05-12). His books are available on?Amazon.com.