Potential for Abuse 'Enormous' With Massive Obamacare Database

Those worried about how much data the National Security Agency has collected on them won't like what's coming in 2014.

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, popularly known as Obamacare, is building a giant database of everyone's personal information as part of its effort to run the system. The Department of Health and Human Services assures everyone that the Federal Data Services Hub will be secure, but after the IRS and NSA scandals, not everyone is convinced.

"The potential for abuse is enormous," notes Rare.com Deputy Editor James S. Robbins. He says that the massive database will include "income and financial data, family size, citizenship and immigration status, incarceration status, social security numbers, and private health information."

It will compile files on everyone in the United States and will get its information from the IRS, the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Defense, the Veterans Administration, the Office of Personnel Management, the Social Security Administration, state Medicaid databases, and the Peace Corps.

CONTINUED:  http://www.newsmax.com/Newsfront/Abuse-Massive-Obamacare-Database/2013/07/21/id/516187?s=al&promo_code=143FA-1#ixzz2ZnEiNeFK 

OBAMACARE: What You Should Know (and Why We Need to Nullify It)

By Diane Rufino


The official name of the sweeping healthcare reform bill is the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (Public Law 111–148). It passed the House of Congress narrowly, by a vote of 220 – 215. It was signed into law on March 23, 2010 by President Obama. We unaffectionately call it “Obamacare” because of the ruthless energy the president used to get it passed, including not giving members of Congress the opportunity to read it. He called Democrats into closed quarters and despite not having enough votes beforehand, magically he was able to convince them to switch their loyalty from the People to the Government. Not a single Republican voted for the bill, and 39 Democrats refused to vote for it as well. Imagine the breach of confidence those Democrats committed when they voted for the bill without even knowing what they were imposing on the American people.

When we learned about the healthcare plan, we understood that it was going to make healthcare available to 32 million Americans who currently are uninsured. We were told that for those of us who already had insurance, either through our employer or a private plan, or through Medicaid or Medicare, we would be able to keep it. For those who don’t have insurance or have been denied insurance because of a pre-existing condition, however, they would be able to obtain coverage either through a state-based insurance exchange system (including an expanded Medicaid program) or under newly-expanded Medicare guidelines. Those with pre-existing conditions would not be penalized for those conditions and would be able to purchase insurance at the same rate as those healthier individuals. What we didn’t know was that by 2014, every citizen would be forced to purchase insurance or be penalized. What we didn’t know was that up to 16,000 new IRS agents would be hired under the bill to go after those who didn’t purchase insurance and to have direct access to their bank accounts. What we didn’t know was that healthy young men and women would be forced to purchase insurance for the sole purpose of paying for other’s coverage. What we didn’t know that the bill was full of new taxes and penalties.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi hailed the bill as “the greatest initiative for the economy.”


Obamacare was sold to the American people by the President and Speaker Pelosi as a fundamental right. On the House floor, she announced: “Did you know the president’s controversial health care law helps guarantee “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness? I appreciate his leadership in helping us honor what our founders put forth in our founding documents, which is life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. And that is exactly what the Affordable Care Act helps to guarantee – a healthier life, the liberty to pursue happiness, to be free of the constraints that lack of healthcare might provide to a family…. If you want to be photographer, a writer, an artist, a musician, you can do so. If you what to start a business, if you want to change jobs, under the Affordable Care Act, you have that liberty to pursue your happiness.”

I’ve never heard someone interpret any of our founding documents so broadly.

Rep. Candice Miller (R-Mich) admonished the Democrats for being so intent on passing a “jobs-killing, tax-hiking, deficit-exploding bill.” She said: “We are going to have a complete government takeover of our health care system faster than you can say, ‘This is making me sick’.” Obviously she knew more than most of the other Congressmen knew.

When making promises and assurances to the Congress and to the American people in his attempt to gain support for the healthcare scheme, President Obama emphasized over and over again: “I can make a firm pledge. Under my plan, no family making less than $250,000 a year will see any form of tax increase. Not your income tax, not your payroll tax, not your capital gains taxes, not any of your taxes.” Well, funny how that promise; that guarantee, that disclaimer of “no new tax increase” in combination with the term “penalty” that appeared no less than 18 times in the text of the healthcare bill managed to convince Chief Justice John Roberts that the Individual Mandate was in fact a “tax.”

So, in spite of what President Obama promised, he has gifted us the largest middle-class tax hike in history.

Which brings us to the healthcare decision….

The Healthcare Decision –

The bottom line is that we are stuck with Obamacare. The Supreme Court handed down that sentence on June 28 of this year in a decision I like to call “Supreme Nonsense.” As we all may recall, 26 states joined together in a lawsuit right after the healthcare bill was enacted (titled Florida v. Sibelius) and challenged the Individual Mandate under the Commerce Clause (the very basis the Congress gave for its authority to legislate) and the Medicaid expansion provision under the Tenth Amendment (claiming that it coerced, or forced, the states into doing something on behalf of the government). Without the Individual Mandate, the states argued that the bill must fail in its entirety for it is that provision that requires the coverage and which is the primary source of funding. Without the mandate, the stated goals of the bill are defeated.

First, the Chief Justice voted with his four conservative colleagues in concluding that the Individual Mandate violated the Commerce Clause. They defined the scope of the Commerce Clause and established a “bright line” rule to guide future federal intrusion into the personal lives of Americans. On a positive note, this decision will restrict American Presidents and future Congresses for a generation and more. Furthermore, the Chief Justice agreed with the states that the Medicaid expansion program violated the Tenth Amendment (states’ rights) and impermissibly coerced them and their resources. But the decision didn’t end there, unfortunately.

As if out of nowhere, Roberts lobbed a curveball to ordinary Americans (who thought they understood the plain meaning of the Constitution) and to legal scholars as well. He sided with the four liberal members of the Court and classified the Individual Mandate as something the administration took great pains to not classify it as – a “tax.” He embraced a position denied by the White House. Roberts wrote that the mandate provision “need not be read to do more than impose a tax. That is sufficient to sustain it.” He upheld the Individual Mandate, as he explained, under Congress’ expansive tax and spend powers. As he wrote: “The individual mandate cannot be upheld as an exercise of Congress’s power under the Commerce Clause,” Roberts wrote. “That Clause authorizes Congress to regulate interstate commerce, not to order individuals to engage in it. In this case, however, it is reasonable to construe what Congress has done as increasing taxes on those who have a certain amount of income, but choose to go without health insurance. Such legislation is within Congress’s power to tax.”

Chief Justice Roberts went out of his way to salvage the Individual Mandate which most scholars believed was unconstitutional. As Merrill Matthews wrote in Forbes magazine: “In essence, Roberts reached down and pulled out a drowning man who had gone under for the third time.”

By narrowing Congress’ commerce and spending powers, Roberts moved the law in a decidedly conservative direction. Yet by invoking the taxing power, he saved not only the people but also Congress from the consequences of their political choices. Let’s hope that the decision will help the President suffer from the consequences of his blind ambition by losing in November. I hope the American people will have the courage to do what the Chief Justice refused to do — stand up to a President and democratic congressmen who never once gave even the slightest consideration to the fact that the individual mandate was likely unconstitutional. Not one. As Nancy Pelosi responded when asked about the provision’s constitutionality: “Are you serious? Are you serious?” Another democratic congressman, Rep. Phil Hare (D-Ill) said to an inquiring reporter: “I don’t know. I don’t worry about the Constitution on this, to be honest…. It doesn’t matter to me.”

Again, the bottom line is that Obamacare survived judicial scrutiny, whether legitimately or under a flawed application of constitutional interpretation. The Individual Mandate, as both a premium and a penalty, is a tax. Obamacare is paid for by a tax, and in fact, many additional new taxes. But the tax is not uniform. The Obamacare tax does not apply to those who presently are untaxed, and it will not apply to the more wealthy, who will be excused because they carry health insurance anyway. So the tax will fall to the middle-class and in fact, the healthcare bill imposes the biggest tax on the middle-class in the entire history of the United States. (And that doesn’t even factor in all the other taxes included in Obamacare).

[Consider that the median US family income is about $50,000. Family health coverage can easily run $20,000 a year, to increase sharply year after year. In this scenario, the coverage mandate is essentially a 40% tax on that family, which is now required by law to ensure that every family member has qualifying coverage. ($20,000 is 40% of $50,000). Because the cost of the coverage will be similar even though incomes vary significantly, the lower the income the higher the effective tax rate, thereby making the tax the most regressive tax in US history, as well].

The most offensive parts of the healthcare bill, as addressed above, are the Individual Mandate, the Medicaid expansion provision, and the series of taxes that will be levied one on top of another, and to be applied stepwise in the next ten years, as a means to pay for the plan. There are at least 21 new taxes embedded in the bill. Obama pulled the old “bait and switch,” which is defined as “an illegal tactic in which a seller advertises one product with the intention of persuading customers to purchase a more expensive product.” He sold us on a product that would cost us one price and impose little burden on the middle-class when in fact, the product comes at a much higher price and at a much greater consequence (to liberty).

As Judge Andrew Napolitano explained the decision: “When we pay our taxes in April, we’re paying taxes on income that we earned. We went out and earned it. When you put gas in the car, you’re paying a tax on the gasoline that you bought. If you use tobacco products, you’re paying federal taxes on tobacco products that you purchased. In each of those cases you are affirmatively engaging in behavior that you know is taxable. But this is the first time in the history of the country that the Court has permitted the Congress to tax people for doing nothing. To punish them for refusing to do what the government wants them to do. That is a very, very dangerous precedent.”

Simply put, the government is going to take a lot more money from the people who earn it — mostly from wealthier Americans who as I explained above, will most likely not even feel it (although $250,000 doesn’t really get you much these days, especially if you live in parts of the northeast, Florida, California, and Arizona) and from most small businesses who will most certainly feel it. It will result in those businesses hiring fewer people, laying off more employees, cutting hours, closing facilities, and thus increasing already high unemployment.

The healthcare decision was most unfortunate and has put the new demons over the American people.

The “Job-Killing” Bill -

Many people have a basic idea of what Obamacare does. Because the bill was so unwieldy and complicated, many are only now discovering many of its details and implications. You can hide a lot of needles inside a haystack that contains 2,700 pages. Three of those needles included the Individual Mandate (an act of coercion by the federal government), the Independent Advisory Payment Board (IPAB, also known as the “death panels”), and the Medicaid expansion program which will put an enormous burden on the states. I’ll discuss them in more detail.


We now know that Obamacare will be the largest tax increase on the middle class in US history. It is already chilling job creation because employers are afraid of what will come down the pipes with Obamacare, and it will KILL any new jobs because of the massive increase in taxes on those who earn over $250,000. As you know, most small business owners organize as an LLC or an association, which means they file as an “individual” under the tax code. And most small business owners are able to classify as earning over $250,000. So they will be hit the hardest by Obamacare, as well as by Obama’s plans to increase taxes on that group if he is re-elected. They will not be able to absorb all the new taxes and still be able to invest in expanding their business, especially when it means they will have to pay healthcare benefits for all new employees (in addition to those they already employ).

– On Wednesday, October 10th, we heard on the news that a Florida billionaire, David Siegel (owner of Westgate Resorts) sent a letter to his 7,000 employees, informing them that he could be forced to lay some of them off if President Obama wins a second term. He said that the Obama administration was a threat to their jobs. He warned that “if any new taxes are levied on me, or my company, as our current President plans, I will have no choice but to reduce the size of this company. I can longer support a system that penalizes the productive and gives to the unproductive. My motivation to work and to provide jobs will be destroyed, and with it, so will your opportunities.”

– That same day, Darden Restaurants announced that it will cut worker hours to part-time in order to meet the rising healthcare costs imposed by Obamacare. Darden Restaurants includes chains such as McDonalds, White Castle, Ruby Tuesdays, Jack-in-the-Box, and many others. Darden has been providing healthcare benefits to its part-time employees which it thought was more than fair, but now under the healthcare bill, which is inflexible on this matter, employees who work 30 hours or more must be provided the same all-inclusive plan that full-time employees receive. Furthermore, companies that do not comply will be penalized. So Darden is going to respond by cutting all non full-time employees down to under 30 hours. [Note that these restaurants, along with Unions, were granted waivers from Obamacare, but they were only temporary. They were 1-year waivers in order to give these organizations time to figure out how to adapt. And now we know... They are going to cut worker hours].

Parts of Obamacare have already affected you or someone you know, and the economy has already been affected. We hear so much about the depressed jobs numbers. How many jobs could be created today if businesses, especially small businesses, didn’t have to worry about how Obamacare will negatively impact them? We can only imagine how many jobs are instantly able to be created if we only had an administration that wasn’t intent on punishing business in order to establish a socialist scheme. We already have the highest business tax in the entire world.

If Mitt Romney is elected, he has promised to repeal Obamacare on his first day in office. I predict that we will immediately see an increase in job creation and an improvement in our economy. As Paul Ryan and Mitt Romney understand, the economy depends on production and that means jobs. The biggest driver of revenue to the federal government isn’t higher tax rates…. it’s economic growth. Growth is the key to fiscal sustainability. And low tax rates are the key to growth. We can never hope to lower taxes if Obamacare is implemented.

If Obama is re-elected, we can hope to repeal it, but he will never sign it. That will require a supermajority. And we will only have a supermajority if a whole lot more Republicans are elected into both houses of Congress, especially the Senate. We can also look into defunding it.

Repeal and Dismantlement –

Obamacare was intended and designed to withstand attempts by Republicans to make it go away. We saw how easily the Supreme Court was able to convert the Individual Mandate “penalty” into a “tax.” We are seeing how the plan goes into effect piece by piece, to be fully implemented by 2014 but still requiring further appropriations into 2019. The massive 2,700-page health care law is deliberately designed to make defunding and dismantling difficult. Dismantling will be difficult because Obamacare has created so many new governmental agencies. Although original estimates reported that it created 159 new government agencies, the Congressional Research Service later concluded that the actual number of new agencies, boards, etc., “is currently unknowable,” because so many of them are empowered to spawn additional entities, just as weeds grow by sending out runners and seeds. Defunding will be particularly tricky because the law is designed to be difficult to uproot, just like a plant with an elaborate root system.

How does the healthcare bill frustrate efforts by Congress to defund the bill?


– First, approximately $120 billion in funding appropriations were included in the bill which Obama signed. Appropriations were made immediately. This violates the typical Congressional process of appropriations. The normal process typically involves enacting authorization bills that authorize spending, and then follows those with separate legislation that actually appropriates the money.

– Second, by making advance appropriations for tens of billions of dollars up to the year 2019, these provisions of Obamacare seek to remove spending decisions from the reach of the current Congress and from future Congresses and Presidents. Although Obamacare was not pitched to the public as a mandatory spending entitlement, the details of the legislation reveal an intent to block any future Congress from controlling spending on Obamacare.

– To defund Obamacare, it is insufficient simply to deny future funding. Until the full law can be repealed, at least the existing and advance appropriations need to be rescinded, just as the House voted last year to repeal billions of dollars from previous appropriations to 123 federal programs. Unfortunately this vote was void because of a parliamentary procedure violation. That was most unfortunate.


– With the healthcare bill, the Congressional Democrats sought to bind future Congresses to spending obligations with Obamacare – for a full decade in advance. This is an outrageous effort. It may not be unconstitutional per se, but in a system that gives citizens the right to have input in the affairs of Congress thru the ballot box, spending decisions should be made by those who currently hold office, not by those who have resigned or been turned out by the voters.

What are some efforts so far to make Obamacare go away? Eric Cantor introduced H.R. 2 – “Repeal of the Job-Killing Health Care Law Act” – in the US House where it passed on January 19, 2011. The Act simply states: “The Act is repealed, and the provisions of law amended or repealed by such Act are restored or revived as if such Act had not been enacted.” H.R. 2 was sent to the Senate where it was put on the calendar but it still has not been allowed to come up for a vote. Also, on July 9th of this year, Congress introduced H.R. 6088 – “Total Repeal of the Unfair Taxes on Healthcare Act” – which would amend the tax code to repeal certain tax increases enacted as part of health care reform. The Act is still in committee.

The healthcare bill can go away if: (i) Congress repeals it (see H.R. 2); (ii) Congress disapproves it under the Congressional Review Act of 1996; (iii) Congress defunds it; (iv) the Supreme Court reverses its opinion; or (v) the States nullify it and are willing to interpose on behalf of their citizens. I will discuss this last option at the end.

Why Obamacare is Bad for America and for Americans

1). First, you should know that members of Congress have EXEMPTED themselves from Obamacare. If it was such a good healthcare plan, why did they exempt themselves? In Federalist Papers No. 57, James Madison listed five ways that members of the House of Representatives can show their fidelity to their constituents and earn their trust. He wrote: “As a fifth circumstance in the situation of the House of Representatives, restraining them from oppressive measures, that they can make no law which will not have its full operation on themselves and their friends, as well as on the great mass of the society. This has always been deemed one of the strongest bonds by which human policy can connect the rulers and the people together. It creates between them that communion of interests and sympathy of sentiments, of which few governments have furnished examples; but without which every government degenerates into tyranny. If it be asked, what is to restrain the House of Representatives from making legal discriminations in favor of themselves and a particular class of the society? I answer: the genius of the whole system; the nature of just and constitutional laws; and above all, the vigilant and manly spirit which actuates the people of America — a spirit which nourishes freedom, and in return is nourished by it.”


2). So far, over $105 billion has been appropriated to fund Obamacare, not including the $760 billion stolen from Medicare. This program is not going to help the economy; it’s going to hurt it. Government spending will be uncontrollable.

3). Under the law, most individuals who can afford it will be required to obtain basic health insurance coverage or pay a fee (termed a “penalty” in the healthcare bill) to help offset the costs of caring for uninsured Americans. This is the notorious Individual Mandate (Section 5000). In other words, everyone must purchase private health insurance or pay a fine. This is the cornerstone of the healthcare reform bill. As Justice Kennedy emphasized at oral arguments, he was very concerned about the status of young people with respect to the healthcare bill. He noted that the government wasn’t exactly been honest about its intentions with the bill, which was to find a way to offset the burden that uninsured individuals place on healthcare. Kennedy said that if the administration was really interested in preventing young people (many who are uninsured) from being such a burden, the healthcare plan would allow them to buy only catastrophic health insurance (instead of the plan that includes well visits, preventative care). Catastrophic health insurance is all that 20-30 year-olds really need; It’s the only product that makes any economic sense for them. But Obamacare doesn’t allow that. So, as Kennedy emphasized, we see what the healthcare bill is really all about. It’s about using 20-30 year-olds to subsidize the plan, to subsidize insurance for those who can’t afford it. It’s about using young healthy people to fund the program. It’s about a social scheme. And now we know… the government’s plan is to subsidize health insurance for everyone, especially those who are uninsured and sick (approximately 20% of all uninsured). The plan forces insurance companies to cover the sick. But it doesn’t want to use the typical means to pay for this – such as tax subsidies. Instead, the government wants to reach OUTSIDE the market and COMPEL a whole bunch of healthy people into that market so they can be used to subsidize the program and help bring healthcare premiums down. In fact, this was the finding by Congress: that bringing young healthy people into the market will bring down the health insurance premium by about 15% for everyone. Unfortunately, though, it will force them to buy something they don’t need or want. This provision kicks in in 2014. By 2014, most citizens and legal residents must carry an expensive health insurance or pay a penalty.

4). A small number of Americans will be exempt from the tax. Those exempted include: (i) people with religious objections; (ii) American Indians with coverage through the Indian Health Service; (iii) undocumented immigrants; (iv) those without coverage for less than three months; (v) those serving prison sentences; (vi) those whose income is below the poverty level. This list of exemptions provides for abuse and group exemptions for certain religious groups.

5). Obamacare will impose 5 major classifications of taxes in 2013 alone, aside from the Individual Mandate (which is the core funding provision, which will hit in 2014):

(i) The Medical Device Manufacturing Tax (a 2.3% tax on medical device makers which will raise the price of every pacemaker, prosthetic limb, stent, operating table, and much more. Most of the manufacturers are small companies).

(ii) The High Medical Bills Tax – This onerous tax provision will hit Americans who face the highest out-of-pocket medical bills. Currently, Americans are allowed to deduct medical expenses on their 1040 form to the extent the costs exceed 7.5% of one’s adjusted gross income. The new ObamaCare provision will raise that threshold to 10%, subjecting patients to a higher tax bill. This tax will hit pre-retirement seniors the hardest. Over the next ten years, affected Americans will pony up a minimum total of $15 billion in taxes thanks to this provision.

(iii) Flexible Spending Account Cap - The 24 million Americans who have Flexible Spending Accounts will face a new federally imposed $2,500 annual cap. These pre-tax accounts, which currently have no federal limit, are used to purchase everything from contact lenses to children’s braces. With the cost of braces being as high as $7,200, this tax provision will play an unwelcome role in everyday kitchen-table health care decisions.


The cap will also affect families with special-needs children, whose tuition can be covered using Flexible Spending Account funds. Special-needs tuition can cost up to $14,000 per child per year. This cruel tax provision will limit the options available to such families, all so that the federal government can squeeze an additional $13 billion out of taxpayer pockets over the next ten years. The targeting of Flexible Spending Accounts by President Obama and congressional Democrats is no accident. The progressive left has never been fond of the consumer-driven accounts, which serve as a small roadblock in their long-term drive for a one-size-fits-all government health care bureaucracy. At this point already, under Obamacare, families cannot use these accounts to pay for over-the-counter medication.

(iv) Surtax on Investment Income - Under current law, the capital gains tax rate for all Americans rises from 15 to 20% in 2013, while the top dividend rate rises from 15 to 39.6%. The new Obamacare surtax takes the top capital gains rate to 23.8% and top dividend rate to 43.4%. The tax will take a minimum of $123 billion out of taxpayer pockets over the next ten years. This new tax will hit capital gains, dividends, rents, and royalties, discouraging investment and harming economic growth.

(v) Medicare Payroll Tax increase - In 2013, the employee portion of the Medicare payroll tax will increase from 1.45 to 2.35% for families earning $250,000 or more and individuals earning $200,000 or more. The income threshold is not indexed for inflation, so more and more middle-income families will be hit by the tax hike as time goes on. This tax soaks employers to the tune of $86 billion over the next ten years. Another provision, as emphasized in the Ryan plan, is a 3.8% Medicare tax on unearned income of “high-income” taxpayers which could apply to proceeds from the sale of single family homes, townhouses, co-ops, condominiums, and even rental income, depending on your individual circumstances and any capital gains tax exclusions. This 3.8% tax on home sales and unearned income will raise more than $124 billion to pay for Obamacare. As you can understand, there is a reason why the authors of Obamacare wrote the law in such a way that the most brutal tax increases take effect conveniently after the 2012 election. It’s the same reason that the bill was pushed thru Congress before anyone had a chance to read it. It’s the same reason that members of Congress (and I’m sure President Obama himself) exempted themselves from it. And it’s the same President Obama, congressional Democrats, and the mainstream media conveniently neglect to mention these taxes.

6). You’ve probably all heard that Obama raided $760 billion dollars from Medicare to pay for Obamacare. But what we didn’t find out until later is that he has no plan to pay that money back. The embedded taxes in Obamacare for Medicare, from what I understand, are to provide for the vast numbers of seniors who will be on the program in the coming years and to provide them with more preventative benefits and coverage. (but not for greater care for major illness). In fact, over-all, Obamacare will reduce the amount of future spending growth in Medicare thru the IPAB. So while more seniors will be on Medicare, spending will not increase accordingly.

7). Medical records will be centralized with the government – in a national database. Put in other terms, the government will have the ability to seize your medical records. In order to make information more readily available for doctors during their appointments, the government intends to create a national database containing every person’s medical history. [This is potentially a violation of the 4th and 5th Amendments - a seizure of a person's privacy, as well as a taking of private property]. People are the owners of their medical records, and the doctors are their custodians. With the creation of such a database, healthcare decisions will be dictated by government bureaucrats and NOT the doctor or patient.

8). Perhaps the most offensive part of the bill is the Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB) – a 15-member panel of bureaucrats tasked with finding ways to cut Medicare spending (that is, it’s role is to ration care in order to keep the costs of the program contained). It is also called the “death panel.” It will take effect in 2014, although there is talk that Obama will try to have it take effect earlier. By law, no more than 7 of the members can be physicians. Board members are appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate. Its decisions cannot be easily challenged. In order to override IPAB’s proposal, opponents must assemble a simple majority in the House and then a three-fifths majority in the Senate and finally, the president’s signature. That makes IPAB more than an advisory board. It’s a super-legislature whose members are more powerful than members of Congress As one leading challenger of the bill has said: “The IPAB is ‘independent’ in the worst sense of the word: it is independent of Congress, the President, the judiciary and the American people. The IPAB is a death panel not only by virtue of its awesome powers to control health-care decisions for millions of Americans, but because its creation and existence are antithetical to our republican form of government and the freedoms it was designed to protect. Here is another bit of info about the IPAB… It appears that in order to repeal the IPAB, a repeal bill MUST be passed by 2017; otherwise we are stuck with it. Furthermore, to pass the repeal, there must be a 3/5 supermajority…… and then even after that vote, it would – by law, continue at least until 2020. [IPAB - See Sections 3403 and 10320] In fact the House has already voted to repeal the IPAB, but the Senate, under Harry Reid, will not take up the measure.

9). Illegal immigrants are not covered by Obamacare. So they will still be able to receive healthcare, mostly by going to the emergency room, and continue to burden the healthcare system so that costs and prices will continue to go up. The burden of Illegal immigrants on the healthcare system was one of the very drivers of its cost increases.

10). Parents of dependent children will be required to keep their adult children on their policies until age 26. One of the provisions in Obamacare is a requirement that group health plans that provide dependent coverage of children make that coverage available until age 26. Will this provision can be considered a good one to some, there are many parents that look forward to the day that their children become adults so that they can wean themselves from supporting them. Provisions like this will be seen as a burden by couples who work and can afford health insurance. When deciding how many children to have, this provision will have to be something they need to consider, in addition to college tuition, etc, etc. Those who can’t afford the premiums and are supplemented by the government can, once again, reproduce without responsibility.

11). New plans must cover 100% of wellness or pregnancy exams (even if the person is beyond child-bearing age)

12). Other problems with the healthcare bill include:

(i) It penalizes marriage. Obamacare creates new taxpayer-funded subsidies for the low and middle classes to purchase health coverage, but the structure of the subsidies allows two individuals to claim more in subsidies alone than if married. This discriminates against married couples and discourages marriage at almost all age and income levels.

(ii) It violates religious liberty. We’ve all heard of the Contraceptive Mandate. Churches are in an uproar over this. The Department of Health and Human Services included the full range of contraceptives, including abortion-inducing drugs, among the women-specific preventive services that Obamacare requires insurers to include with no cost-sharing. This mandate violates Americans’ conscience rights and religious liberty. Its narrow exemption for religious employers will force many who find these products morally objectionable—including religious charities, hospitals, and schools—to pay for them.

(iii) It puts over half of all Americans on a government program. Because of Obamacare’s huge expansion of Medicaid and creation of taxpayer-funded subsidies to purchase health coverage, more than half of all Americans will be dependent on a government health care program (Medicare, Medicaid, or the government exchanges) by the end of this decade.

13). There is no tort reform provision in the bill

14). The government cannot run any program or agency efficiently. It has a history of bankruptcy and failure. For example:

(i) The U.S. Postal Service was established in 1775 – they’ve had 234 years to get it right; it is broke, and even though heavily subsidized, it can’t compete with private sector FedExp and UPS services. The U.S. Postal Service will lose over $7 billion this year and will require yet another “bailout.” [The Postal Service is a CONSTITUTIONAL obligation; Healthcare is NOT).

(ii) Social Security was established in 1935 - they've had 74 years to get it right; it is broke. There is nothing in the Social Security Trust Fund except IOUs from the government.

(iii) Fannie Mae was established in 1938 - they've had 71 years to get it right; it is broke. Freddie Mac was established in 1970 - they've had 39 years to get it right; it is broke. Together Fannie and Freddie have now led the entire world into the worst economic collapse in 80 years.

(iv) The War on Poverty was started in 1964 - they've had 45 years to get it right; $1 trillion of our hard earned money is confiscated each year and transferred to "the poor"; it hasn't worked.

(v) Medicare and Medicaid were established in 1965 - they've had 44 years to get it right; they are both broke; and now our government dares to mention them as models for all US health care.

(vi) AMTRAK was established in 1970 - they've had 39 years to get it right; last year they bailed it out as it continues to run at a loss!

(vii) In 2009, a trillion dollars was committed in the massive political payoff called the Stimulus Bill. It shows NO sign of working; it's been used to increase the size of governments across America, and raise government salaries while the rest of us suffer from economic hardships. It has yet to create a single new private sector job. Our national debt projections (approaching $10 trillion) have increased 400% in the last six months.

(viii) "Cash for Clunkers" was established in 2009 and went broke in 2009 - after 80% of the cars purchased turned out to be produced by foreign companies, and dealers nationwide are buried under bureaucratic paperwork demanded by a government that is not yet paying them what was promised.

With a perfect 100% failure rate and a record that proves that each and every "service" shoved down our throats by an over-reaching government turns into disaster, how could any informed American trust our government to run or even set policies for America's health care system, which is over 17% of our economy?

15). Obamacare only achieves its goals if: (i) everyone is forced to participate and those that can pay do pay; and (ii) the states provide Medicaid expansion to get as many people signed up and on the program as possible. The goal of course is to provide affordable care to everyone and to keep costs contained over the course of the program. Hence, the title of the bill. With the Supreme Court's decision, however, states are no longer mandated to add people to Medicaid. They have the option of opting out of the expansion provision and therefore do not have to set up the exchanges. In fact, several states have been adamant about not creating the health care exchanges, namely Texas, Louisiana, Michigan, South Carolina, and Florida. New Jersey Governor Chris Christie vetoed setting up an exchange in his state in May of this year, and Governor John Lynch of New Hampshire (a Democrat) also vetoed the initiative in his state. The question is this: If enough states opt out, will the goals of the bill be frustrated to the point that universal healthcare will not be viable as a government entitlement program because of the increased costs that will result?

16). If Obama is re-elected, the fear - or, the likely reality - is that we are stuck with Obamacare. By extension - because of its chilling effect on the economy, the new norm here in the United States might be 8%-9% unemployment (most of it part-time with no benefits) and most people living on the government dole. The question is where will the money continue to come from?

We've Lost our Fundamental Liberties --

The average American would love to believe that as long as he or she isn't annoying anyone or isn't infringing on anyone's legitimate rights, he or she should be left alone to enjoy his life and property -- to pursue happiness. But there are too many government regulatory agencies to allow that to be true. This is not a nation where people are left alone anymore. This is a nation where they are hounded from the moment they are born until the moment they die by the arms of a regulatory state run by men and women weaned on the ideology of big government, socialism, and the idea that the government's job is to protect our green planet and to promote the greatest benefit to the greatest number of people). Sadly, this is a nation, founded on the inherent power of the individual over his life, liberty, and property, where just being left alone is the greatest of luxuries.

All of this begs the bigger question: What has become of our Inalienable Rights? Government has strayed away from its intended purpose. All levels of government have abused their powers. The federal government is no longer constrained by the document that alone gives it permission and limits on what it can legally do -- that is our Constitution. It no longer protects our Life, Liberty, and Property. It attacks our Life with the Obamacare. It attacks our Liberty with the Patriot Act, the National Defense Authorization Act, and even the TSA at our airports. And it attacks our Property with the federal income tax system and Agenda 21. The government's evil, liberty-killing scheme is funded by the power of plunder that was granted it under the 16th Amendment. The government plunders our very natural human resources -- our Property.... the fruit and improvements of our property, the products of our labor, and the creations of our mind. But then again, a government that can create economic stress is in a good position to constrain our liberties. A hungry man thinks about food, not freedom.

Finally, I don't like the notion of a planned society. We've seen how many of them have ended - Nazi Germany, Communist Russia, Communist China, Pol Pot's Cambodia, Kim Jung Il's North Korea, to name a few. Obamacare puts our lives under the power of bureaucrats and experts. They claim to be experts, but in what field. One such "expert" who helped craft the IPAB ("death panel") is an expert in cost effectiveness. Ezekiel Immanuel. He has a cold inhuman approach to healthcare. I don't trust when government gets involved in questions that talk about what is good for man, and what justice should be. I don't trust when government enters those debates that talk about what things are worth having at what price and who should have them. And I certainly don't trust when government gives an opinion on the value of life. I saw what they did with the unborn in Roe v. Wade. A decision that asks whether a person's life is worth living on certain terms (as with an unfortunate diagnosis), is a decision that should be left to that person alone and according to the God-given right of self-preservation, he should be entitled to pursue whatever medical options he can. Finally, I don't like a program that demands my obedience to government or be penalized for it. That was Nazi Germany.

Please continue reading at http://forloveofgodandcountry.com/.  There is much more and to important to miss!  Share with friends.

Sequester would cut $11 billion from Medicare

Sequestration would cut $11 billion from Medicare and take millions of dollars away from Affordable Care Act implementation programs.


The Obama administration released its highly anticipated report Friday on the effects of sequestration — a blunt-force budget-cutting tool that Congress created when it raised the country's debt ceiling. The sequester would make deep cuts to defense spending as well as domestic programs. Medicare payments to doctors, hospitals and other healthcare providers would take an across-the-board 2 percent cut. That would come out to roughly $11 billion, according to the administration's report. The sequester would also make significant cuts to programs created by the Affordable Care Act, which are not subject to the 2 percent cap. Grants to help states establish insurance exchanges — new marketplaces for private insurance coverage — would lose $66 million, the administration said. The law's prevention and public health fund would lose $76 million.

CONTINUED:  http://teapartyorg.ning.com/forum/topic/show?id=4301673%3ATopic%3A971893&xgs=1&xg_source=msg_share_topic

Video: Brain Surgeon Confirms ObamaCare Rations Care, Has Death Panels!

A brain surgeon on the Mark Levin show confirms that Obamacare will indeed ration healthcare, and will include panels to decide whether patients (or “units,” as they are referred to) are eligible to receive critical care. The inhumanity is unbelievable.


http://www.westernjournalism.com/brain-surgeon-confirms-obamacare-rations-care-has-death-panels/

New Cato Paper: Obamacare's Anti-Constitutional and Authoritarian Super-Legislature

In 2010, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act created the Independent Payment Advisory Board, or IPAB. The unelected government officials on this board possess unprecedented power to make laws free of any meaningful oversight. In a new paper, Diane Cohen and Michael F. Cannon argue that the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act and IPAB are not merely unconstitutional -- they are anti-constitutional: "The Independent Payment Advisory Board poses a threat to the U.S. Constitution and representative government that transcends party and ideology."

The Independent Payment Advisory Board: PPACA's Anti-Constitutional and Authoritarian Super-Legislature, by Diane Cohen and Michael F. Cannon

READ IT HERE:  http://www.cato.org/publications/policy-analysis/independent-payment-advisory-board-ppacas-anticonstitutional-authoritarian-superlegislature?utm_source=Cato+Institute+Emails&utm_campaign=a5324fda75-Cato_Today&utm_medium=email&mc_cid=a5324fda75&mc_eid=2653a08a51

Michael Barone: Ouch! Decade of Obamacare Will Cost $1,160 billion

How much will Obamacare -- call it the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act if you like -- cost over the next 10 years?

More than you've been led to believe, reports Charles Blahous of George Mason University's Mercatus Center. To be specific, he projects it will add $1,160 billion to net federal spending over the next 10 years and at least $340 billion to federal budget deficits in that time.

CONTINUED:  http://www.gopusa.com/commentary/2012/04/16/barone-ouch-decade-of-obamacare-will-cost-1160-billion/?subscriber=1

And Now the Wait Begins ...... Obamacare and the Supreme Court

by Diane Rufino, March 28, 2012
http://forloveofgodandcountry.wordpress.com

On Monday, March 26, the Supreme Court began oral arguments in the highly-anticipated case challenging the constitutionality of the Patient Protection & Affordable Care Act. By Wednesday afternoon, the hearings had concluded. The historic arguments consolidated an appeal from 26 states, a group representing several small businesses, and several individuals who contend that the 2010 health care law, President Obama’s signature legislative achievement, is unconstitutional.

Perhaps significantly, Justice Kennedy, the Court's notorious swing vote, appeared to be very concerned about the status of young people with respect to the healthcare bill. He noted that the government hasn't exactly been honest about its intentions with the bill, which was to offset the burden that uninsured individuals place on healthcare.

If the administration was really interested in preventing young people (many who are uninsured) from being such a burden, the healthcare plan would allow them to buy only catastrophic health insurance (instead of the plan that includes well visits, preventative care). Catastrophic health insurance is all that 20-30 year-olds really need; It's the only product that makes any economic sense for them. But Obamacare doesn't allow that. So, as Kennedy emphasized, we see what the healthcare bill is really all about. It's about using 20-30 year-olds to subsidize the plan, to subsidize insurance for those who can't afford it. It's about using young healthy people to fund the program. It's about a social scheme.

As we all know, the government's plan is to subsidize health insurance for everyone, especially those who are uninsured and sick (approximately 20% of all uninsured). The plan forces insurance companies to cover the sick. But it doesn't want to use the typical means to pay for this - such as tax subsidies. Instead, the government wants to reach OUTSIDE the market and COMPEL a whole bunch of healthy people into that market so they can be used to subsidize the program and help bring healthcare premiums down. In fact, this was the finding by Congress: that bringing young healthy people into the market will bring down the health insurance premium by about 15% for everyone. Unfortunately, though, it will force them to buy something they don't need or want.

The healthcare challenge, on its face, is about the Individual Mandate - the government's belief that it has the power under the Commerce Clause to force Americans to purchase the specific health insurance it dictates, even those who don't need it. It is also about the fundamental scheme in place, established by our Founders and memorialized with the Tenth Amendment, that the federal government is a government of limited powers with the bulk of powers being reserved to the States where they can most effectively regulate for the health, safety, welfare, and morality of their people. It is about the section of the bill which enlarges the Medicaid program and coerces the States to participate in its healthcare scheme by threatening to withhold all Medicaid funding should they decide not to. According to the states, the sheer volume of the federal funding at stake leaves them with no practical capacity to withdraw from Medicaid. By placing all of a state’s federal Medicaid dollars at risk for the failure to adhere to the healthcare bill’s conditions, they claim the Act also amounts to compulsion. And furthermore, they claim that conditions imposed on state governments to implement the scheme constitutes impermissible commandeering of the states and their resources.

But the underlying issue is individual liberty. It is about the right of an individual to be free from government compulsion - not being forced to do something against one's will or spending one's money (that is, what remains after the government takes its cut in the form of income taxes) on things one don't want or need. It's the fundamental right to conduct one's life the way he or she feels fit and to make his or her own personal decisions. It's the basic right "to be left alone" by government.

And the decision, therefore, will speak volumes about how strongly our nation's highest court is committed to this grand notion of individual liberty. We already know that there are several justices who believe in an expansive view of government and use the court to evolve its responsibilities. And there are those justices who believe in the strict interpretation of the Constitution and in limits to federal power. And then there is Justice Kennedy, who can be defined by neither classification. His opinion may turn out to be the deciding factor in this case.

All eyes are usually on Justice Kennedy, the genial justice who sits on the fence, often keeping interested parties nervous as to which side he will side with - the liberal bloc (Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan) or the conservative bloc (Justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and the Chief Justice John Roberts). Kennedy was appointed to the bench in 1988 by President Reagan, after the Senate failed to confirm his first choice, committed originalist Robert Bork. Reagan also appointed Justice Scalia. At the time of his appointment, he was a judge on the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, appointed by President Gerald R. Ford. The Ninth Circuit is known as the most liberal of the circuit courts, and in fact, tried to remove the words "Under God" from the Pledge of Allegiance. Justice Kennedy's crucial swing vote has often been the decisive factor in many of our most important and controversial cases of recent years.

• Boy Scouts of America v. Dale (2000; upholding the Boy Scouts of America's organizational right to ban homosexuals from being scoutmasters. He joined the conservative justices in this decision)

• Lawrence v. Texas (2003; finding the right of homosexual men to engage in sodomy in the privacy of their home thereby overturning an earlier Supreme Court decision which banned the practice. He joined the liberal justices on this decision)

• Kelo v. City of New London (2005; holding that local government has the power to take private property for economic development through the use of eminent domain. He joined the liberal justices in this decision)

• United States v. Lopez (2005: holding that possession of a gun in a local school zone is not an economic activity that might, in the aggregate, have a substantial effect on interstate commerce because the conduct at issue has nothing to do with "commerce." He joined the conservative justices in this decision)

• Kennedy v. Louisiana (2008; holding that the 8th Amendment bars Louisiana from imposing the death penalty for the heinous rape of a child where the crime did not result, and was not intended to result, in the victim's death, although the injuries were so extensive, doctors don't know how she survived. Kennedy joined the liberal justices on this decision)

• Boumediene v. Bush (2008; a case challenging the legality of Boumediene’s detention at Guantanamo Bay. Kennedy sided with the four liberal justices in finding that the constitutionally guaranteed right of habeas corpus applies to persons held in Guantanamo Bay and to persons designated as enemy combatants on that territory)

• District of Columbia v. Heller (2008; holding that the 2nd Amendment confers an individual right to keep and bear arms; All four of the liberal justices believe it only applies to state militias and therefore prevents individuals from having the right to possess guns in their homes)

• McDonald v. City of Chicago (2010; holding that Heller applies to the States through the 14th Amendment. holding that the Fourteenth Amendment makes the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms for the purpose of self-defense applicable to the states. Kennedy sided with the conservative justices in asserting that these rights are "fundamental to the nation's scheme of ordered liberty" and are "deeply rooted in this Nation's history and tradition" and hence are appropriately applied to the states through the 14th Amendment)

• Brown v. Plata (2011; holding that releasing violent criminals from an over-crowded prison is a proper remedy to address the violation of prisoners' 8th Amendment guarantee against 'cruel and unusual punishment' caused by long wait times to see prison doctors and less-than-ideal medical accommodations)

In the 2008–2009 term, there were 16 decisions in which the justices split strictly along ideological lines. Kennedy joined the conservative members of the Court eleven times and the liberals only five.

And so, all eyes were on Justice Kennedy in the case against the Patient Protection & Affordable Care Act (PPACA) and all ears were open to his questions and comments, in the hopes of providing a glimpse into his mindset regarding the administration's huge power grab under the Act.

On the first day of hearings, the justices had to entertain whether the healthcare challenge is even allowable under the Anti Injunction Act (AIA), a federal tax law that says, in essence, that a taxpayer cannot challenge a tax until it comes into effect. The provision at issue is the penalty portion of the Act, which requires that almost every individual purchase health insurance by 2014 or pay a penalty. The questions before the Court were twofold: (1) Can the penalty be classified as a "tax" and therefore implicate the AIA? And (2) If so, is it then premature for the court to consider the present challenge to the individual mandate?

Justice Breyer asked point blank: "Where I see the problem is in the part of the AIA which refers to the 'assessment or collection of any tax.' Now, Congress has nowhere used the word 'tax.' What it says is 'penalty.' Moreover, this is not in the Internal Revenue Code 'but for purposes of collection.' And so why is this a tax?" He further emphasized that lawmakers intentionally did not use the term when they crafted the legislation nor did they intend the penalty as a tax.

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, another liberal member of the Court, also expressed skepticism. "This is not a revenue-raising measure because, if it's successful, nobody will pay the penalty and therefore there will be no revenue to raise."

Judging on the arguments and discussion made the first day, it seems likely the case will be decided and not postponed. Even the administration's lawyer, Solicitor General Donald B. Verrilli urged the justices to decide the merits of the dispute. "This case presents issues of great moment," he said.

On the second day of hearings Verrilli faced a barrage of skeptical questions from four of the court’s more conservative justices, including Justice Kennedy. The questions posed to him went straight to the central issue in the case and that is whether the federal government can compel individuals not engaged in commerce to buy a product - health insurance - and hence become part of that commerce in order to be regulated. “Can you create commerce in order to regulate it?” Justice Kennedy asked. That was his very first question of the day. He later told Mr. Verrilli that the federal government faced “a heavy burden of justification” for the Individual Mandate and pressed him to articulate “some limits on the Commerce Clause."

The court focused on whether the mandate for Americans to have insurance "amounts to an affirmative duty to engage in commerce" and is therefore "an unprecedented step beyond what our cases allow," which is how Justice Kennedy phrased the issue. He then told Verrilli: "With this law, you are changing the relationship of the individual to the government.”

Chief Justice Roberts asked: "So, can the government require you to buy a cell phone because that would facilitate responding when you need emergency services? That way, you can just dial 911 no matter where you are?" Verrilli tried to argue that Roberts' scenario was distinguishable from the health care market. But Roberts fired back: "It seems to me that's the same as in my hypothetical. You don't know when you're going to need police assistance. You can't predict the extent to emergency response that you'll need. But when you do, and the government provides it. I thought that was an important part of your argument, that when you need health care, the government will make sure you get it. Well, when you need police assistance or fire assistance or ambulance assistance, the government is going to make sure to the best of its ability that you get it."

Justice Alito asked Solicitor General Verrilli: "Do you think there is a, a market for burial services?" He answered in the affirmative. Alito then continued: "All right, suppose that you and I walked around downtown Washington at lunch hour and we found a couple of healthy young people and we stopped them and we said, "You know what you're doing? You are financing your burial services right now because eventually you're going to die, and somebody is going to have to pay for it, and if you don't have burial insurance and you haven't saved money for it, you're going to shift the cost to somebody else. Isn't that a very artificial way of talking about what somebody is doing?" Verrilli didn't agree. But Alito pushed further: "And if that's true, why isn't it equally artificial to say that somebody who is doing absolutely nothing about health care is financing health care services? See, I don't see the difference. 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? If you don't have money then someone has to pay... Whether the State or a family member. And isn't that what the mandate is doing? You can correct me if these figures are wrong, but it appears to me that the CBO (Congressional Budget Office) has estimated that the average premium for a single insurance policy in the non-group market would be roughly $5,800 in — in 2016. The administration estimates that a young, healthy individual targeted by the mandate on average consumes about $854 in health services each year. So the mandate is forcing these people to provide a huge subsidy to the insurance companies for other purposes that the act wishes to serve, but if those figures are right, isn't it the case that what this mandate is really doing is not requiring the people who are subject to it to pay for the services that they are going to consume? It is requiring them to subsidize services that will be received by somebody else." Verrilli acknowledged that this was in fact the case.

Chief Justice Roberts commented: "It's critical how you define the market. If I understand the law, the policies that you're requiring people to purchase involve - must contain provision for maternity and newborn care, pediatric services, and substance use treatment. It seems to me that you cannot say that everybody is going to need substance use treatment, substance use treatment or pediatric services, and yet that is part of what you require them to purchase. Your theory is that there is a market in which everyone participates because everybody might need a certain range of health care services, and yet you're requiring people who are never going to need pediatric or maternity services to participate in that market."

He then asked: "If the government can force people to buy health insurance can it require people to buy certain types of cars? Broccoli?" Justice Scalia hinted that if everyone were forced to buy a new car, it might help lower the costs of new cars for everyone.

Scalia offered his interpretation of the government's case: "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. That approach is different from the regulation of any type of commerce that already exists out there."

Solicitor General Verrilli tried to paraphrase the government's position: "Our position is that it's not an illegitimate exercise of the commerce power for some people to subsidize others. You're young and healthy one day, but you don't stay that way. And the system works over time."

Justice Scalia spoke up: "We're not stupid. They're going to buy insurance later. They're young and need the money now. When they think they have a substantial risk of incurring high medical bills, they'll buy insurance, like the rest of us. You seem to suggest that they are never going to buy it. You could solve that problem by simply not requiring the insurance company to sell it to somebody who has a condition that is going to require medical treatment, or at least not require them to sell it to him at a rate that he sells it to healthy people. But you don't want to do that. And to me, that seems like a problem created by the government - a self-created problem."

Chief Justice Roberts added: "You say your argument is limited to health insurance But once you establish that you have a market for health care, would you suppose Congress's power under the Commerce Clause is broad in scope with regard to how they they regulate that market. I don't see how we can accept your argument that 'it's just insurance.' Once we say that there is a market and Congress can require people to participate in it, as some would say - or as you would say, that people are already participating in it - it seems to me that we can't say there are limitations on what Congress can do under its commerce power. It could regulate the market in any rational way. Congress has chosen to regulate the health care market. Everybody's in it, they said, so it can be regulated. This year, they looked at a particular serious problem, which is how people pay for it. And they decided to compel people to purchase insurance. But next year, they can decide to look at something else - a different problem - and decide how they are going to regulate it. And they'll be able to do it because they've already accepted the argument that this is a market in which everybody participates."

Scalia jumped in: "I tell you what the something else is. The something else is everybody has to exercise, because there's no doubt that lack of exercise cause — causes illness, and that causes health care costs to go up. So the Federal government says everybody has to join an exercise club. That's the something else."

Mr. Verrilli tried to explain: "What matters here is whether Congress is choosing a tool that's reasonably adapted to the problem that Congress is confronting. And that may mean that the tool is different from a tool that Congress has chosen to use in the past."

Justice Scalia responded: "Well, that's both "Necessary and Proper." What you just said addresses what's necessary. Yes, has to be reasonably adapted. Necessary does not mean essential, just reasonably adapted. But in addition to being necessary, it has to be proper. And we've held in two cases that something that was reasonably adapted was not proper because it violated the sovereignty of the States, which was implicit in the constitutional structure. The argument here is that this also may be necessary, but it's not proper because it violates an equally evident principle in the Constitution, which is that the Federal Government is not supposed to be a government that has all powers; that it's supposed to be a government of limited powers. And that's what all this questioning has been about. What is left? If the government can do this, what, what else can it not do? But that's not the only constitutional principle at stake in this case. An equally evident constitutional principle is the principle that the Federal Government is a government of enumerated powers and that the vast majority of powers remain in the States and do not belong to the Federal Government. Do you acknowledge that that's a principle?" Verrilli so acknowledged.

Scalia continued: "I mean, the Tenth Amendment says the powers not given to the Federal Government are reserved, not just to the States, but to the States and the people. And the argument here is that the people were left to decide whether they want to buy insurance or not."

Justice Kennedy added: "The reason this Mandate is concerning is because it requires the individual to do an affirmative act. In the law of torts our tradition, our law, has been that you don't have the duty to rescue someone if that person is in danger. The blind man is walking in front of a car and you do not have a duty to stop him absent some relation between you. And there is some severe moral criticisms of that rule, but that's generally the rule. And here the government is saying that the Federal Government has a duty to tell the individual citizen that it must act, and that is different from what we have in previous cases and that changes the relationship of the Federal Government to the individual in the very fundamental way."

Chief Justice inserted: "The States are not limited to enumerated powers, but the Federal Government is. And it seems to me it's an entirely different question when you ask yourself whether or not there are going to be limits in the Federal power, as opposed to limits on the States."

Another issue that came up was whether the penalty could be classified as a tax (returning to some degree to the topic touched on the day before). If the penalty could be classified as a tax, then the thought is that the Individual Mandate could be supported, in the alternative, under Congress' "Tax and Spend" powers. Justice Scalia quickly noted that "the President has said it isn't a tax." Then Justice Ginsberg added: " A tax is to raise revenue, tax is a revenue-raising device, and the purpose of this exaction is to get people into the health care risk pool before they need medical care, and so it will be successful. If it doesn't raise any revenue, if it gets people to buy the insurance, that's what this penalty is designed to do - to affect conduct. The conduct is buy health protection, buy health insurance before you have a need for medical care. That's what the penalty is designed to do, not to raise revenue."

At that point, the Solicitor General stepped down and the respondents' attorney (that is, for the states), Mr. Clement was given time before the Court. He immediately struck down the administration's position that the Individual Mandate (the penalty, in particular) could be legally supported under the Taxing power. As he told the Court: "I think it might raise some issues about whether or not that would be a valid exercise of the taxing power. My constitutional concern is that it would be a disguised impermissible direct tax. And we all know that Congress is limited in its ability to impose direct taxes. The one thing I think the framers would have clearly identified as a direct tax is a tax on not having something. I mean, the framing generation was divided over whether a tax on carriages was a direct tax or not. Hamilton thought that was a indirect tax; Madison thought it was a direct tax. I have little doubt that both of them would have agreed that a tax on not having a carriage would have clearly been a direct tax. I also think they would have thought it clearly wasn't a valid regulation of the market in carriages."

Attorney Clement then moved on to the market that the government is trying to dominate: "What health insurance does and what all insurance does is it allows you to diversify risk. And so it's not just a matter of I'm paying now instead I'm paying later. That's credit. Insurance is different than credit. Insurance guarantees you an upfront, locked-in payment, and you won't have to pay any more than that even if you incur much great expenses. And in every other market that I know of for insurance, we let people basically make the decision whether they are relatively risk averse, whether they are relatively non-risk averse, and they can make the judgment based on..."

Justice Sotomayor interrupted: "But we don't in car insurance, I mean the states don't. Let me ask you a question: Do you think that if some states decided not to impose an insurance requirement, that the Federal Government would be without power to legislate and require every individual to buy car insurance?"

Clement answered: "Let me say this, you're right in the first point to say that it's the states that do it, which makes it different right there."

Justice Kennedy asked: "Isn't everyone in the market in the sense that they are creating a risk that the market must account for?" Similarly, Justice Kagan asked: "If the effect of all the uninsured people is to raise everybody's premiums, not just when they get sick, if they get sick, but right now in the aggregate, and Wickard and Raich tell us we should look at the aggregate, and the aggregate of all these uninsured people are increasing the normal family premium, Congress says, by a thousand dollars a year. Those people are in commerce. They are making decisions that are affecting the price that everybody pays for this service.

[Wickard v. Filburn (wheat case; 1924, holding that Farmer Filburn couldn't grow wheat for his own use because, if other were to do the same, then in the aggregate, all these farmers would have no need to buy wheat on the open market and would therefore affect commerce) and Gonzalez v. Raich (medical marijuana case; 2005; holding that California's Compassionate Use Act, which legalized marijuana for medical use, conflicted with the federal government's Controlled Substances Act, which is a valid exercise of Congress' commerce powers)].

Mr. Clement disagreed. He answered: "Let's be careful about what they were regulating in Wickard. What they were regulating was the supply of wheat. It didn't in any way imply that they could require every American to go out and buy wheat. And yes, one of the consequences of regulating local market participants is it'll affect the supply and the demand for the product. That's why you can regulate them, because those local market participants have the same effect on the interstate market that a black market has on a legal market.

That aside, I don't think the point you make distinguishes the healthcare market from other markets. When I'm sitting in my house deciding I'm not to buy a car, I am causing the labor market in Detroit to go south. I am causing maybe somebody to lose their job, and for everybody to have to pay for it under welfare. So the cost shifting that the government tries to uniquely to associate with this market, it is everywhere. And even more to the point, the rationale that they think ultimately supports this legislation, that look, it's an economic decision, once you make the economic decision, we aggregate the decision, there is a substantial effect on commerce. That argument works here. It works in every single industry. There are other markets that affect every one: transportation, food, burial services, though we don't like to talk about that either. There also are situations where there are many economic effects from somebody's failure to purchase a product. My unwillingness to buy an electric car is forcing up the price of an electric car. If only more people demanded an electric car there would be economies of scale, and the price would go down.

If I could talk about the difference between the health insurance market and the health care market...... If some private company comes up with a great new wonder drug that would have huge benefits for everybody's health and if everybody had to buy it, it would facilitate economies of scale, and the production would be efficient, and the price would be cheaper and force everybody in the health care market, the actual health care market to buy the wonder drug, and if the government wanted to compel people to take this drug, I'd be up here making the same argument. I would be saying that there is no such authority within the commerce power of the federal government. In Federalist 45, Madison says the commerce power is a new power, but it's not one anyone has any apprehension about. And the reason they didn't have any apprehension about it is because it's a power that only operated once people were already in commerce. You see that from the text of the clause. The first kind of commerce Congress gets to regulate is commerce with foreign nations. Did anybody think the fledgling Republic had the power to compel some other nation into commerce with us? Of course not. And in the same way, I certainly don't think the framers had understood the commerce power to include the power to compel people to engage in commerce."

At that point, Attorney Clement stepped down and Michael Carvin, the attorney representing several small businesses (National Federation of Independent Businesses, NFIB), addressed the Court to argue the unconstitutionality of the PPACA. "I'd like to begin with the Solicitor General's main premise, which is that they can compel the purchase of health insurance in order to promote commerce in the health market because it will reduce uncompensated care. If you accept that argument, you have to fundamentally alter the text of the Constitution and give Congress plenary power. It simply doesn't matter whether or not this regulation will promote health care commerce by reducing uncompensated care; all that matters is whether the activity actually being regulated by the act negatively affects Congress or negatively affects commerce regulation, so that it's within the commerce power. If you agree with us that this is — exceeds commerce power, the law doesn't somehow become redeemed because it has beneficial policy effects in the health care market. In other words, Congress does not have the power to promote commerce. Congress has — Congress has the power to regulate commerce. And if the power exceeds their permissible regulatory authority, then the law is invalid... Think about it this way... when you've entered the marketplace they can impose all sorts of restrictions on you. But what can't they do? I think everyone intuitively understands that regulating participants after A and B have entered into a contract is fundamentally less intrusive than requiring the contract in the first place."

Justice Ginsberg asked: "Isn't the only way to prevent people from paying for the cost-free healthcare of those who are sick and uninsured to have people pay sooner rather than later?"

Carvin answered: "The real problem are those who default on their health care payments. That is an entirely different group of people, an entirely different activity than being uninsured. The people who impose the costs on the rest of us are people who engage in a different activity at a different time, which is defaulting on their health care payments. It's not the uninsured. Under Justice Kagan's theory, you could regulate anybody if they have got a statistical connection to a problem. You could say, since we could regulate people who enter into the mortgage market and impose mortgage insurance on them, we can simply impose the requirement to buy private mortgage insurance on everybody before they have entered the market because we are doing it in this prophylactic way before it develops." [Chief Justice Roberts interrupted to note that not everyone enters the housing market while everyone eventually enters the healthcare market] Carvin continued: "And my basic point to you is this: the Constitution only gives Congress the power to regulate things that negatively affect commerce or commerce regulation. It doesn't give them the power to regulate things that are statistically connected to things that negatively affect the commerce. If they have that power, then they obviously have the power to regulate everything because everything in the aggregate is statistically connected to something that negatively affects commerce, and every compelled purchase promotes commerce." (I admit, I initially had a hard time following that).

Finally, Mr. Carvin ended with these words: "We turn you to the Commerce Clause jurisprudence that bedeviled the Court before the 1930s, where they were drawing all these kinds of distinctions among industries; whereas our test is really very simple. Are you buying the product or is Congress compelling you to buy the product? I can't think of a brighter line. And again, if Congress has the power to compel you to buy this product, then obviously, they have got the power to provide you - to compel you to buy any product, because any purchase is going to benefit commerce, and this Court is never going to second-guess Congress's policy judgments on how important it is this product versus that product. The words "inactivity" and "activity" are not in the Constitution. But the words "commerce" and "noncommerce" are. It's a distinction that comes directly from the text of the Constitution.

The Framers consciously gave Congress the ability to regulate commerce, because that's not a particularly threatening activity that deprives you of individual freedom. If you were required, if you were authorized to require A to transfer property to B, you have, as the early cases put it, a monster in legislation which is against all reason in justice, because everyone intuitively understands that regulating people who voluntarily enter into contracts in setting changing conditions does not create the possibility of Congress compelling wealth transfers among the citizenry. And that is precisely why the Framers denied them the power to compel commerce, and precisely why they didn't give them plenary power."

On the third day of oral arguments, the Court engaged in a discussion of severability - whether the healthcare bill could survive if the Individual Mandate was struck down and whether other provisions could still survive. It was a tortuous line of questioning. Justice Scalia suggested many members of Congress might not have voted for the bill without the central provisions, and so perhaps it wouldn't be fair to allow remaining portions of the bill to survive. He also was emphatic that it was not the province of the Court to go through each and every page to sort out which provision should remain and which should go. He even joked that being required to read the 2,700-page bill should fall under the 8th Amendment's concept of "Cruel and Unusual Punishment." Justice Sotomayor argued that it was Congress' job to fix or scrap the bill, should the mandate be found unconstitutional. Opponents of the bill argued against severability, suggesting that simply striking the mandate while leaving in place corresponding new insurance regulations could result in a spike in premiums that Congress did not intend.

In the afternoon session, the justices considered a challenge by the 26 states to the expansion of the Medicaid program for low-income Americans, an important feature in the effort extending health insurance to an additional 30 million people. The court's liberal justices made it fairly clear they will vote to uphold the Medicaid expansion, which would take in 15 million people with the federal government paying almost all the costs. They did not seem to agree with the challengers that expansion of the program is unconstitutionally coercive. Justice Kagan asked: "Why is a big gift from the federal government a matter of coercion?"

Attorney Clement defended the states' position: "Let me focus on what I think are the three hallmarks of this statute that make it uniquely coercive. One of them is the fact that this statute is tied to the nonvoluntary individual mandate. The second factor, of course, is the fact that Congress here made a distinct and conscious decision to tie the state's willingness to accept these new funds, not just to the new funds but to their entire participation in the statute, even though the coverage for these newly eligible individuals is segregated from the rest of the program. In other words, if a state doesn't want to cover the newly eligible individuals, it not only doesn't get the new money, it also doesn't get any of the money under the original contact, agreement (old money). What's coercive is not the absolute guarantee that the secretary could cut off every penny, but the fact that she could. And the third factor is the sheer size and scope of Medicaid. The expansion of Medicaid since 1984 is really breathtaking. In 1984 the Federal spending to the States was a shade over $21 billion for Medicaid. Right now it's $250 billion, and that's before the expansion under this statute. If the Secretary should withhold all funding for a state's poor population, that state would have an impossible time coming up with the funds on its own to cover those people."

Hopefully, we know where Justice Kennedy stands on matters that threaten to upset the balance of power created under our federalist system. In short, he has never been one to want to enlarge the government's status with regard to its relationship to the States.

The arguments and answers given on day two of course represent the meat of the case. I believe it is the closing remark by Attorney Carvin which holds the key to how Justice Kennedy will ultimately view the Individual Mandate. He emphasized that the ability to regulate commerce was not the same as compelling commerce for the latter would deprive individuals of individual liberty. I believe in his final analysis, Justice Kennedy will look at the implications the Individual Mandate has on individual liberty - the very precious intangible that our Founders so judiciously and ambitiously sought to protect and promote.

I point to two fairly recent cases to highlight Justice Kennedy's views on Liberty and Federalism - United States v. Lopez (1995) and Bond v. United States (2011). His words make his intentions clear. I believe his firm belief in the concept of federalism and the liberty interests it serves is an important insight as to how he may come down on the healthcare question, and especially the Individual Mandate.

In Lopez, the Court was asked to decide the constitutionality of a federal statute - the Gun-Free School Zones Act of 1990, which made it a crime for any individual to "knowingly possess a firearm at a place that [he] knows...is a school zone." Alfonzo Lopez, a high school senior, carried a concealed weapon into his San Antonio, Texas high school and was arrested and charged under Texas law with firearm possession on school premises. The next day, the state charges were dismissed after federal agents charged Lopez with violating a federal criminal statute, the Gun-Free School Zones Act. Lopez challenged the federal statute on the grounds that it exceeded the power of Congress to legislate conduct in the states under the Commerce Clause. Justice Kennedy agreed with the majority that the conduct the federal statue sought to regulate was not in fact "commerce" and therefore was an unconstitutional exercise of authority. He wrote a concurring opinion:

The history of our Commerce Clause decisions contains at least two lessons of relevance to this case. The first, as stated at the outset, is the imprecision of content-based boundaries used without more to define the limits of the Commerce Clause. The second, related to the first but of even greater consequence, is that the Court as an institution and the legal system as a whole have an immense stake in the stability of our Commerce Clause jurisprudence as it has evolved to this point. Stare decisis operates with great force in counseling us not to call in question the essential principles now in place respecting the congressional power to regulate transactions of a commercial nature. That fundamental restraint on our power forecloses us from reverting to an understanding of commerce that would serve only an 18th-century economy, dependent then upon production and trading practices that had changed but little over the preceding centuries; it also mandates against returning to the time when congressional authority to regulate undoubted commercial activities was limited by a judicial determination that those matters had an insufficient connection to an interstate system. Congress can regulate in the commercial sphere on the assumption that we have a single market and a unified purpose to build a stable national economy.

In referring to the whole subject of the federal and state balance, we said this just three Terms ago: 'This framework has been sufficiently flexible over the past two centuries to allow for enormous changes in the nature of government. The Federal Government undertakes activities today that would have been unimaginable to the Framers in two senses: first, because the Framers would not have conceived that any government would conduct such activities; and second, because the Framers would not have believed that the Federal Government, rather than the States, would assume such responsibilities. Yet the powers conferred upon the Federal Government by the Constitution were phrased in language broad enough to allow for the expansion of the Federal Government's role.' It does not follow, however, that in every instance the Court lacks the authority and responsibility to review congressional attempts to alter the federal balance. This case requires us to consider our place in the design of the Government and to appreciate the significance of federalism in the whole structure of the Constitution.

Of the various structural elements in the Constitution, separation of powers, checks and balances, judicial review, and federalism, only concerning the last does there seem to be much uncertainty respecting the existence, and the content, of standards that allow the judiciary to play a significant role in maintaining the design contemplated by the Framers. Although the resolution of specific cases has proved difficult, we have derived from the Constitution workable standards to assist in preserving separation of powers and checks and balances. These standards are by now well accepted and judicial review is also established beyond question, Our role in preserving the federal balance seems more tenuous.

There is irony in this, because of the four structural elements in the Constitution just mentioned, federalism was the unique contribution of the Framers to political science and political theory. Though on the surface the idea may seem counterintuitive, it was the insight of the Framers that freedom was enhanced by the creation of two governments, not one.

"In the compound republic of America, the power surrendered by the people is first divided between two distinct governments, and then the portion allotted to each subdivided among distinct and separate departments. Hence a double security arises to the rights of the people. The different governments will control each other at the same time that each will be controlled by itself." James Madison, Federalist No. 51

Just as the separation and independence of the coordinate branches of the Federal Government serve to prevent the accumulation of excessive power in any one branch, a healthy balance of power between the States and the Federal Government will reduce the risk of tyranny and abuse from either front. . . . In the tension between federal and state power lies the promise of liberty. The Constitution divides authority between federal and state governments for the protection of individuals. State sovereignty is not just an end in itself. Rather, federalism secures to citizens the liberties that derive from the diffusion of sovereign power.

The theory that two governments accord more liberty than one requires for its realization two distinct and discernible lines of political accountability: one between the citizens and the Federal Government; the second between the citizens and the States. If, as Madison expected, the federal and state governments are to control each other, see Federalist No. 51, and hold each other in check by competing for the affections of the people, see Federalist No. 46, those citizens must have some means of knowing which of the two governments to hold accountable for the failure to perform a given function. Federalism serves to assign political responsibility, not to obscure it. Were the Federal Government to take over the regulation of entire areas of traditional state concern, areas having nothing to do with the regulation of commercial activities, the boundaries between the spheres of federal and state authority would blur and political responsibility would become illusory. The resultant inability to hold either branch of the government answerable to the citizens is more dangerous even than devolving too much authority to the remote central power.

To be sure, one conclusion that could be drawn from The Federalist Papers is that the balance between national and state power is entrusted in its entirety to the political process. Madison's observation that "the people ought not surely to be precluded from giving most of their confidence where they may discover it to be most due," (Federalist No. 46) can be interpreted to say that the essence of responsibility for a shift in power from the State to the Federal Government rests upon a political judgment, though he added assurance that "the State governments could have little to apprehend, because it is only within a certain sphere that the federal power can, in the nature of things, be advantageously administered, Whatever the judicial role, it is axiomatic that Congress does have substantial discretion and control over the federal balance.

For these reasons, it would be mistaken and mischievous for the political branches to forget that the sworn obligation to preserve and protect the Constitution in maintaining the federal balance is their own in the first and primary instance. In the Webster-Hayne Debates and the debates over the Civil Rights Acts before the Senate Committee on Commerce (88th Congress; 1963), some Congresses have accepted responsibility to confront the great questions of the proper federal balance in terms of lasting consequences for the constitutional design. The political branches of the Government must fulfill this grave constitutional obligation if democratic liberty and the federalism that secures it are to endure.

Although it is the obligation of all officers of the Government to respect the constitutional design, the federal balance is too essential a part of our constitutional structure and plays too vital a role in securing freedom for us to admit inability to intervene when one or the other level of Government has tipped the scales too far.

Our ability to preserve this principle under the Commerce Clause has presented a much greater challenge. This clause has throughout the Court's history been the chief source of its adjudications regarding federalism no other body of opinions affords a fairer or more revealing test of judicial qualities. But as the branch whose distinctive duty it is to declare what the law is, are often called upon to resolve questions of constitutional law not susceptible to the mechanical application of bright and clear lines. The substantial element of political judgment in Commerce Clause matters leaves our institutional capacity to intervene more in doubt than when we decide cases, for instance, under the Bill of Rights even though clear and bright lines are often absent in the latter class of disputes. But our cases do not teach that we have no role at all in determining the meaning of the Commerce Clause.

The statute before us upsets the federal balance to a degree that renders it an unconstitutional assertion of the commerce power, and our intervention is required. As the Chief Justice explains, unlike the earlier cases to come before the Court here neither the actors nor their conduct have a commercial character, and neither the purposes nor the design of the statute have an evident commercial nexus. The statute makes the simple possession of a gun within 1,000 feet of the grounds of the school a criminal offense. In a sense, any conduct in this interdependent world of ours has an ultimate commercial origin or consequence, but we have not yet said the commerce power may reach so far. If Congress attempts that extension, then at the least we must inquire whether the exercise of national power seeks to intrude upon an area of traditional state concern.

If a State or municipality determines that harsh criminal sanctions are necessary and wise to deter students from carrying guns on school premises, the reserved powers of the States are sufficient to enact those measures. Indeed, over 40 States already have criminal laws outlawing the possession of firearms on or near school grounds."

In the case of Bond v. United States, a woman was convicted of trying to poison her husband's mistress. (24 times over several months). He had had a child with the mistress while still married to Bond. The government tried to convict her under a federal statute designed to go after terrorists and so she sued, claiming that she should have been convicted under an applicable state criminal statute. The Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit held that Bond lacked standing to challenge the statute. The Supreme Court, in a unanimous decision, held that a criminal defendant who has been convicted under a federal statute can challenge that conviction on grounds that the statute is unconstitutional. In this particular case, the Court held that the statute exceeded the federal government's powers with respect to the Tenth Amendment. Justice Kennedy wrote the majority opinion:

"The federal system rests on what might at first seem a counter-intuitive insight, that “freedom is enhanced by the creation of two governments, not one.” Alden v. Maine, 527 U. S. 706, 758 (1999). The Framers concluded that allocation of powers between the National Government and the States enhances freedom, first by protecting the integrity of the governments themselves, and second by protecting the people, from whom all governmental powers are derived.

The principles of limited national powers and state sovereignty are intertwined. While neither originates in the Tenth Amendment, both are expressed by it. Impermissible interference with state sovereignty is not within the enumerated powers of the National Government, see New York v. United States, 505 U. S. 144 (1992), at 155–159, and action that exceeds the National Government’s enumerated powers undermines the sovereign interests of States. See United States v. Lopez, 514 U. S. 549, 564 (1995). The unconstitutional action can cause concomitant injury to persons in individual cases.

Federalism has more than one dynamic. It is true that the federal structure serves to grant and delimit the prerogatives and responsibilities of the States and the National Government vis-à-vis one another. The allocation of powers in our federal system preserves the integrity, dignity, and residual sovereignty of the States. The federal balance is, in part, an end in itself, to ensure that States function as political entities in their own right.

But that is not its exclusive sphere of operation. Federalism is more than an exercise in setting the boundary between different institutions of government for their own integrity. “State sovereignty is not just an end in itself: Rather, federalism secures to citizens the liberties that derive from the diffusion of sovereign power.

Some of these liberties are of a political character. The federal structure allows local policies 'more sensitive to the diverse needs of a heterogeneous society,' permits 'innovation and experimentation,' enables greater citizen 'involvement in democratic processes,' and makes government 'more responsive by putting the States in competition for a mobile citizenry.' [All of these would protect and enlarge individual liberty and protect against an oppressive "one-size-fits-all" approach].

Federalism secures the freedom of the individual. It allows States to respond, through the enactment of positive law, to the initiative of those who seek a voice in shaping the destiny of their own times without having to rely solely upon the political processes that control a remote central power. True, of course, these objects cannot be vindicated by the Judiciary in the absence of a proper case or controversy; but the individual liberty secured by federalism is not simply derivative of the rights of the States.

Federalism also protects the liberty of all persons within a State by ensuring that laws enacted in excess of delegated governmental power cannot direct or control their actions. [See ibid]. By denying any one government complete jurisdiction over all the concerns of public life, federalism protects the liberty of the individual from arbitrary power. When government acts in excess of its lawful powers, that liberty is at stake.

The limitations that federalism entails are not therefore a matter of rights belonging only to the States. States are not the sole intended beneficiaries of federalism. An individual has a direct interest in objecting to laws that upset the constitutional balance between the National Government and the States when the enforcement of those laws causes injury that is concrete, particular, and redressable. Fidelity to principles of federalism is not for the States alone to vindicate."

The outcome of this historic case against the massively oppressive healthcare reform bill will no doubt shape the legacy of the Roberts’ Court, influence President Obama's re-election prospects, and potentially deepen the ideological rift that is already dividing the country. But most importantly, the outcome will determine what impact the US Constitution still has on protecting the individual from the pernicious reaches of government.

References:

United States v. Lopez, 514 U.S. 549 (1995). Referenced at: http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/93-1260.ZO.html

Bond v. United States, 564 U.S. ___ (2010).

"Anthony A. Kennedy," NY Times, March 29, 2012. Referenced at: http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/k/anthony_m_kennedy/index.html

Transcript and Audio for Monday's Arguments: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0312/74477.html

Transcript and Audio for Tuesday's Arguments: http://www.npr.org/2012/03/27/149465820/transcript-supreme-court-the-health-care-law-and-the-individual-mandate

Transcript and Audio for Wednesday's Arguments: http://www.npr.org/2012/03/28/149548299/transcript-audio-supreme-court-the-health-care-law-and-medicaid-expansion

Audio for Tuesday's arguments: http://apne.ws/Hft6z3

Audio for Wednesday's arguments: http://apne.ws/GX1p23
(morning) and http://apne.ws/GXdZOP (afternoon).

"The Supreme Court Arguments Are Over - What Happens Now?," Kaiser Health News, March 29, 2012. Referenced at: http://www.kaiserhealthnews.org/Daily-Reports/2012/March/29/supreme-court-big-picture-wrap-up.aspx