Nothing gold, nothing gray
will make a feeling stay.
To realize the power
notwithstanding the hour
your hand you must make hold
Nature’s first green that’s gold.

Thanks for the link to the WS article. Again, what a tangled web we weave when we practice to deceive.

Pat,

My wife is an IT person, she voiced the same reservations.

Side note: its still 94 degrees at 8:30 pm in SE Iowa. I don’t need Obamacare, I need a Canadian cold front to swoop down and make thunderstorms that rain, rain, rain.

http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/morning-jay-dont-bet-obamacare_648166.html?nopager=1

I blogged about the issue here.

Interstate Purchasing. Currently, individuals and families can purchase health insurance only in the States in which they live, because insurance companies are prohibited from selling polices outside their respective States. Thus the consumer is prevented from purchasing coverage from another State that might offer more suitable, or more affordable, coverage.

This proposal breaks the lock, allowing each individual to use the refundable tax credit toward the purchase of health insurance in any State. This will greatly expand the choices of coverage available to the consumer, and also will encourage broader competition and diversity among insurers, who will be able to sell their policies to individuals and families in every State, as other companies do in other sectors of the economy. After analyzing Federal Employee Health Benefits Program [FEHBP] preferred provider organization [PPO] prices, the Government Accountability Office reports: “We found that FEHBP PPO hospital prices differed by 259 percent and physician prices differed by about 100 percent across metropolitan areas in the United States, after we removed the geographic variation associated with the costs of doing business such as rents and salaries, and differences in the types of services provided.”

Allowing consumers to shop across State lines will balance State regulation of health insurance. Individuals no longer will have to pay for health benefits mandated by their home States that they do not need; they will be able to choose policies from States whose mandates better fit their personal circumstances. States will then have an incentive to balance their insurance mandates against costs to remain competitive with other States.

See:

http://roadmap.republicans.budget.house.gov/plan/default.aspx#Healthsecurity

click on “Health Care Security and scroll a couple pages.

I don’t understand why the Republican governors would refuse to institute the exchanges, other than it is yet another unfunded mandate. Really the Federal government itself should either a) set up the exchange or b) just simply require insurance companies to sell in any state (we don’t need an interstate exchange for fruit or televisions.)

Here’s another post by M. Tanner which expands and clarifies on his above post:

http://beforeitsnews.com/story/2350/111/The_States_Resist_Obamacare_by_Michael_D._Tanner.html

Now what for those states that refuse to set up their own exchange? The feds threaten to rewrite the legislation to remove the loophole which would lead to a fresh constitutional challenge and another look at whether or not the mandate is a penalty or a tax.

Andrew McCarthy cites United States v Butler. This case has some great language upholding the general idea that taxation must benefit everyone and must raise revenue within the expression of an enumerated power. All else shall be left to the States sovereignty.

http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/historics/USSC_CR_0297_0001_ZS.html

See especially paragraphs 2, 9-11, 13; and after “Held” 4, 9, and 12.

Note also the seeming contradiction between paragraph 15 and the result which limits the application of the General Welfare Clause.

15. The power to tax and spend is a separate and distinct power; its exercise is not confined to the fields committed to Congress by the other enumerated grants of power, but it is limited by the requirement that it shall be exercised to provide for the general welfare of the United States.

The answer is that a tax to provide for the general welfare of the United States must also not invade the reserved powers of the States. Those powers are all powers not enumerated. Health Care is not an enumerated power. Therefore, by definition that a federal tax must accomplish the end of raising revenue for not only the general population but for fields withing the powers enumerated, anything doing different is not a tax.