Alabama Gov. Vows to Veto ObamaCare Exchange
According to WSFA-12 News, Alabama legislators are working on legislation to create an ObamaCare Exchange. But:
Governor Robert Bentley [R] will likely veto the bill.
“This legislation is premature. The federal government has yet to establish clear guidelines for a health insurance exchange,” said Deputy Communications Director Jeremy King, in a statement to WSFA 12 News. “Also, the federal government has extended some deadlines for putting an exchange together. Plus, the U.S. Supreme Court has not yet ruled on the constitutionality of the federal health care law. If Supreme Court justices strike down the law as the Governor hopes they will, there will be no need for such an exchange. Either way, there is no need to establish an exchange at this point,” the statement went on to say.
“Doing so without clear guidance from Washington would simply be a guessing game. Also, there would still be time in the 2013 session to set up an exchange if the law is upheld. If this legislation is approved in the current session, a veto can be expected.”
Full story and video here.
From the Annals of ObamaCare: ‘Illinois Suspends Insurance Exchange Setup’
Here’s the story from WIUS, the NPR affiliate at the University of Illinois Springfield:
A health exchange is one of the main initial components of the Affordable Care Act.
It’s basically a table of insurance plans people who don’t currently have coverage could choose from once the national health care law hits its stride. If it ever does.
The U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments in March challenging the constitutionality of ObamaCare.
“I’ve suspended the talks on the Illinois insurance exchange until the Supreme Court makes its decision, which we expect in June,” Rep. Frank Mautino (D- Spring Valley), who has been leading Illinois’ talks to set up the exchange, said.
“As the negotiator, it’s very difficult to have … businesses – decide how much they’re willing to pay to run an exchange, when the federal law may go away. So I’ve lost a lot of the strength of negotiation,” he said.
Controversial aspects include who’ll run the exchange, how much power insurance companies will get, and who’ll pay for it.
About 50 organizations, including insurance companies, business groups, and health care advocates had been meeting weekly.
Audio is also available here.
Democrats control the executive and legislative branches of government in Illinois.
Sometimes, Governments Lie (6th Anniversary Ed.)
(This blog post first appeared at Cato@Liberty following the release of the 2006 Medicare and Social Security trustees’ reports. I repost it, with updated links and “exhaustion dates” because sadly nothing else has changed.)
Year after year, federal officials speak of the Social Security and Medicare trust funds as if they were real. Yesterday Today, the government announced that the Social Security trust fund will be exhausted in 2040 2033 and that the Medicare hospital insurance trust fund will be exhausted in 2018 2024— projections that the media dutifully reported.
But those dates are meaningless, because there are no assets for these “trust funds” to exhaust. The Bush administration wrote in its FY2007 budget proposal:
These balances are available to finance future benefit payments and other trust fund expenditures—but only in a bookkeeping sense. These funds…are not assets…that can be drawn down in the future to fund benefits…When trust fund holdings are redeemed to pay benefits, Treasury will have to finance the expenditure in the same way as any other Federal expenditure: out of current receipts, by borrowing from the public, or by reducing benefits or other expenditures. The existence of large trust fund balances, therefore, does not, by itself, increase the Government’s ability to pay benefits.
This is similar to language in the Clinton administration’s FY2000 budget, which noted that the size of the trust fund “does not…have any impact on the Government’s ability to pay benefits” (emphasis added).
I offer the following proposition:
If the government knows that there are no assets in the Social Security and Medicare “trust funds,” and yet projects the interest earned on those non-assets and the date on which those non-assets will be exhausted, then the government is lying.
If that’s the case, then these annual trustees reports constitute an institutionalized, ritualistic lie. Also ritualistic is the media’s uncritical repetition of the lie.
Alan Blinder Owes Me $5 for Wasting My Time
In today’s Wall Street Journal, Alan Blinder writes one of the most error-ridden and discourse-debasing op-eds I have ever read. About any topic. Ever.
A sampling:
[O]ur country was founded on the idea that the rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness are inalienable. Access to affordable health care is surely essential to two of these three rights, maybe to all three.
This is absurd. Does Blinder really mean to say that until about a hundred years ago, when modern medicine really began, the lack of access to affordable health care alienated every single human being to walk the Earth from their rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness?
I wish people would think—long and hard—before they write about health care. Especially the smart ones.
Politico: Opponents Are Winning the Debate over ObamaCare ‘Exchanges’
Politico has a great story about how free-market groups are defeating ObamaCare Exchanges at the state level:
Conservatives like John Graham of the Pacific Research Institute have also been touring states with the platform provided by the American Legislative Exchange Council to help kill off state-based exchanges, a key piece of health reform that will help millions of people purchase insurance coverage — often with federal subsidies — starting in 2014.
“Our approach has to be absolute noncollaboration, civil disobedience — well, not civil disobedience but resistance … by whatever means,” said Graham.
Two years into the law’s implementation, conservative emissaries have contributed to impressive stats. Almost all red states are holding off on exchange legislation at least until the Supreme Court decides on the Affordable Care Act, and in most of those states, exchange-building legislation has crawled to a stop.
I have to point out three problems with the story, though. First, the Cato Institute and I are libertarian, not conservative.
Second, the article identifies Cato, ALEC, and AFP as being “funded partly by the Koch brothers.” Even though these groups have no direct or indirect financial interest in this issue, and even though Cato currently receives no funding from the Kochs, and even though Cato is currently fighting a hostile takeover attempt by the Kochs, I guess that’s a fair categorization. What isn’t fair is how the article fails to disclose that Leavitt Partners has a direct financial interest in this issue: Leavitt is getting paid by states to help implement Exchanges. (See “Health Exchanges: A New Gold Mine,” Politico, June 27, 2011.) It would have been nice if the article mentioned that all the moneyed interests – including health insurance carriers and many Chambers of Commerce – are on the pro-Exchange side. But it at least should have mentioned Leavitt’s financial interest.
Third, I’m not sure what basis there is for saying “most legal experts think” the federal government can offer tax credits and subsidies in federal Exchanges. My co-author Jonathan Adler and I have been following that debate closely. Only a handful of scholars have even commented on the issue, and they are fairly evenly split. If I’m unaware of others who have weighed in, I’d like to hear about them.
That’s Not a Limiting Principle, Charles Kolb Edition
Charles Kolb is president of the Committee for Economic Development and was a domestic policy adviser to Bush the Elder. Over at Huffington Post, he articulates why (he thinks) the Constitution’s Commerce Clause empowers Congress to force people to purchase health insurance, but not broccoli. That is to say, he offers (what he thinks is) a limiting principle that (he thinks) would enable the Supreme Court to uphold ObamaCare’s individual mandate, but still leave some constraints on Congress’s ability to force people to buy things. Like broccoli.
Yet Kolb’s proposed limiting principle is no more a limiting principle than Harvard law professor Noah Feldman’s proposed limiting principle, because the two make the same argument. Almost verbatim. So rather than regurgitate my response to Feldman, I’ll just link to it.
Okay, I’ll regurgitate this part:
Like every other so-called limiting principle offered by ObamaCare’s defenders, Feldman’s[/Kolb's] has no basis in the Constitution or any other law. It is a post hoc rationalization, made by people who are shocked to find themselves before the Supreme Court, defending the constitutionality of their desire to bully others into submission.
Couldn’t resist.
Biden Confident about ObamaCare Litigation. Should He Be?
Over the weekend, Vice-President Joe Biden said that he was confident the Supreme Court would not invalidate President Obama’s health care law. Here’s Biden:
I’m not going to speculate about something I don’t believe will happen.
Flashback to 2000 when the Supreme Court declared then-Senator Biden’s initiative, the Violence Against Women Act, unconstitutional because it was beyond the limited powers of Congress. At the time, Biden wrote:
I am disappointed, but not surprised, by the U.S. Supreme Court’s 5-4 decision Monday to strike down the one piece of the landmark Violence Against Women Act that empowers a victim of domestic violence or sexual assault to sue her attacker in federal court. … The Supreme Court has been inching toward this decision for the last several years. In case after case, the court has grown increasingly bold in stripping the federal government of its ability to make decisions on behalf of the American people. … This court, molded by conservatives, has proven eager to substitute its own judgment for that of the political branches democratically elected by the people to do their business.
Yes, Ms. Pelosi, We’ve Been Serious the Whole Time
The start of my latest Obamacare op-ed, hot off the pixels:
“Can you create commerce in order to regulate it?” With those words, Justice Anthony Kennedy sent the legal establishment reeling.
Was the Supreme Court really taking seriously the preposterous claims of the Tea Party-inspired hacks who were suing the federal government? Was there really a chance that five justices, acting as would-be partisan hacks themselves, would throw out President Obama’s signature achievement? Could Obamacare, which name everyone is now allowed to use because the administration itself has adopted it, really fall on some technicality about mandating economic activity rather than regulating it when it occurs?
In a word, yes.
Read the whole thing at CNN.com.
ObamaCare in Four Words
Cato Senior Fellow Randy E. Barnett argued on behalf of Angel Raich at the Supreme Court in 2004. It was the last big case at the High Court dealing with broad federal assertions of power under the Commerce Clause. On Friday at the Cato Institute’s new F.A. Hayek Auditorium, Barnett laid out the four words that define ObamaCare’s individual mandate: unprecedented, uncabined, unnecessary, and unconstitutional.
You can watch the full event from Friday here.
ObamaCare Supporters, Be Warned: This May Sting a Little
Cato has now posted my remarks from last week’s “Obamacare in the Supreme Court” conference:
The full conference will be available here soon.
Podcast: ObamaCare’s Most Unconstitutional Provision Isn’t the Mandate. It’s IPAB.
My latest podcast, “IPAB: ObamaCare’s Next Constitutional Hurdle.”
Why ObamaCare Must Go, in Ten Short Minutes
Last week, I appeared on NPR’s Tell Me More program. My discussion with host Michel Martin gives a good synopsis of why ObamaCare is both harmful to consumers and unconstitutional. Listen to the segment here.
For a contrary perspective, listen to former Obama administration acting solicitor general Neal Katyal, who appeared on the program the next day. If you do listen to both programs, let me know what you think about Katyal’s comments, specifically this part:
MARTIN: First, I want to play a short clip from Michael Cannon of the Cato Institute who spoke to us yesterday as we said. This is a little of what he told us. Here it is.
MICHAEL CANNON: If the Supreme Court were to uphold this unprecedented and really breathtaking assertion of government power, there would be nothing to stop the Congress from forcing Americans to purchase any private product that Congress chose to favor. That could be a gym membership. That could be stock in Exxon Mobil. That could be broccoli if Congress decided that any of these products move in interstate commerce and that forcing you to buy it was essential to the regulatory scheme they wanted to enact.
MARTIN: What is your response to that?
KATYAL: Well, I mean, that’s a lot of rhetoric and not really a legal argument because it’s not responsive to what the government is asking for here. What the government is saying is, look, everyone consumes healthcare in this country, you and I. And, you know, even if I might say to myself, I don’t need health insurance. I won’t get sick. The fact is, as human beings with mortality, we are going to get sick and it’s unpredictable when.
You could get struck by a heart attack or cancer or hit by a bus and wind up in the emergency room and then it’s average Americans who have to pick up the tab for that. And so the government is not saying here we have the power to force people to buy goods. They’re saying, look, you’re going to already buy the goods. You’re going to use it. And the only question is, are you going to have the financing now to pay for it.
And so the government is regulating financing. It’s kind of like a government law that says you’ve got to pay cash or credit. It’s not the government coming in and saying, oh, consume this product you wouldn’t otherwise consume. And as for the kind of, you know, ludicrous suggestion that this would somehow lead to the government forcing people to eat broccoli or the like, I mean, I would think that someone from the Cato Institute would know that the Bill of Rights and the privacy protections in the constitution would protect against such drastic hypotheticals.
Now, I’ve been at this for a while. I’ve seen people evade uncomfortable questions and mischaracterize things I’ve said. But for some reason, this instance really surprised me. Maybe Katyal was nervous.
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