court case

The big news this week is that the Virginia court struck down Obama care based on the commerce clause of the constitution. This clause gives the federal government the right to regulate interstate commerce. Commerce by definition means having a buyer and a seller and interstate means that these two are in different states. An Iowa corn farmer sells his corn to an elevator in Illinois. The challenge in this case is that there is no buyer and the government is stepping in and forcing a person to buy and for this reason the Supreme Court is likely to agree with the Virginia lower court. That however is only the first challenge. The second part has to do with enforcement. The Obama care law says that you must buy health insurance and if you don’t you can be fined $750. However the law further states that if you refuse to pay the fine then there is nothing else the government can do. The reason this is important is that the law has removed the pre-existing conditions clause, which means anyone with any kind of health problem can buy insurance with no questions asked. If this is the case then people will not buy health insurance until they get sick which will destroy the Obama care idea of insuring everyone. Cost sharing is based on the idea that everyone sign up and pay premiums when they are healthy.

This currently happens with Medicaid as many people who are eligible do not sign up until they are sick since there is no pre-existing condition clause in Medicaid.

The way around this is too change Obama care to include stiff penalties for those who choose not to purchase health insurance, however this is some concern that it is not constitutional to penalize someone for not buying a product thus the reason for the lack of enforcement in the plan.

Does all this sound like a federal government plan!