Is anyone surprised about the federal judge in Texas ruling the entire health-care law unconstitutional? I’m not.
As I shared in my book Bill Please: Consumers Driving Health Care, this could be predicted due to the way the Affordable Care Act came to be. Victory at any cost cannot be the modus operandi in a fully functioning democracy. Consensus was never achieved in Congress. Further, our presidents are not authorized to either make or change laws – that’s what dictators do. Yet, at least the last three sitting presidents believe they can and have – unchecked. Why is this important? Our democracy is important. We are just checks and balances away from not having a democracy. If We the People don’t make certain these checks and balances are honored, we no longer have a democracy.
That’s the big picture here. As far as the Affordable Care Act goes, it is facing quite the legal quagmire and it will be interesting to see what happens next. As soon as the GOP succeeded in removing the individual mandate from the tax code, this was the plausible next legal move, nullifying the Supreme Court argument in the GOP’s first attempt to rule it unconstitutional that the individual mandate is a tax and that Congress has the power to authorize taxes. How about the Democrats and Republicans working together, in good faith, to come up with a health care solution that is best for all their constituents? That’s what we elected them to do. How about they focus on enabling us as consumers to take the wheel? How about they focus on the core issue -- unsustainable prices? This ought to be the message to our representatives in Congress.
As I shared in my book Bill Please: Consumers Driving Health Care, this could be predicted due to the way the Affordable Care Act came to be. Victory at any cost cannot be the modus operandi in a fully functioning democracy. Consensus was never achieved in Congress. Further, our presidents are not authorized to either make or change laws – that’s what dictators do. Yet, at least the last three sitting presidents believe they can and have – unchecked. Why is this important? Our democracy is important. We are just checks and balances away from not having a democracy. If We the People don’t make certain these checks and balances are honored, we no longer have a democracy.
That’s the big picture here. As far as the Affordable Care Act goes, it is facing quite the legal quagmire and it will be interesting to see what happens next. As soon as the GOP succeeded in removing the individual mandate from the tax code, this was the plausible next legal move, nullifying the Supreme Court argument in the GOP’s first attempt to rule it unconstitutional that the individual mandate is a tax and that Congress has the power to authorize taxes. How about the Democrats and Republicans working together, in good faith, to come up with a health care solution that is best for all their constituents? That’s what we elected them to do. How about they focus on enabling us as consumers to take the wheel? How about they focus on the core issue -- unsustainable prices? This ought to be the message to our representatives in Congress.
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