The discussion revolves around whether the Constitution and Bill of Rights should be considered static documents or living documents that can evolve in meaning over time. Participants explore the implications of judicial interpretation, the role of the Supreme Court, and the original intent of the Founders in relation to the Constitution's meaning. The scope includes theoretical, conceptual, and historical perspectives on constitutional interpretation.
Participants generally disagree on whether the Constitution is a living document or a static one. There are competing views on the role of the Supreme Court in interpreting the Constitution, with no consensus reached on the implications of judicial interpretation versus original intent.
Participants highlight limitations in the discussion, such as the dependence on historical context and the unresolved nature of how interpretation aligns with the original intent of the Constitution. The discussion also reflects varying interpretations of the separation of powers and the mechanisms for constitutional change.
SixNein said:I think you are misrepresenting Obama due to partisan ideology. The president hasn't taken action to challenge the authority of the courts. If he were to ignore the supreme court after the ruling, that would be a challenge.
Right now we are talking about nothing more profound than partisan politics.
The comedy of our current political environment is that Romney would probably rule about the same as Obama.
Exactly! Ask Bush and Gingrich. They highly recommend it.mege said:...what's wrong with ignoring the SCOTUS too?
Gokul43201 said:Exactly! Ask Bush and Gingrich. They highly recommend it.
russ_watters said:In that case, there may be the appearance of a scam, but the individual mandate is just an attempt to fix a flawed private business model. Many young people forgo insurance (I did it) because they are healthy, which makes costs go up for everyone else. So forcing everyone to get health insurance - and at a much higher rate for the young, who now can't buy it cheaply due to the elimination of the insurance company's incentive to charge them less - brings down the average cost of being insured.
Bush said:Secondly, there are such things as roving wiretaps. Now, by the way, any time you hear the United States government talking about wiretap, it requires -- a wiretap requires a court order. Nothing has changed, by the way. When we're talking about chasing down terrorists, we're talking about getting a court order before we do so. It's important for our fellow citizens to understand, when you think Patriot Act, constitutional guarantees are in place when it comes to doing what is necessary to protect our homeland, because we value the Constitution.
Unless there's some system that forces healthy people to fork out money (either the mandatory insurance mandate or higher taxes), there's no way to provide medical care to patients with pre-existing conditions at a price that's less than the cost of their care.
jim hardy said:Insurance companies have driven the costs so high that you now have to buy their 'insurance' as 'protection' against your financial back getting broken. . It's a giant shakedown, not a bit different than the gangsters selling 'protection' against hoodlums braking your knees. They've built a morbidly obese bureaucracy with sole purpose of harvesting us working folk.
Source ?
"Insurance companies have driven the costs so high that you now have to buy their
'insurance' as 'protection' against your financial back getting broken. . It's
a giant shakedown, not a bit different than the gangsters selling 'protection'
against hoodlums braking your knees. They've built a morbidly obese bureaucracy
with sole purpose of harvesting us working folk."
Medicare overhead costs are ~ 1 to 2 %. private insurance overhead costs are ~ 20 X higher .They've built a morbidly obese bureaucracy
with sole purpose of harvesting us working folk."
""Amid a fierce debate over the future of Medicare, Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., recently compared the administrative costs for the government-run program with the costs for private insurers.
"There's a 1.5 percent to 2 percent overhead in Medicare," Boxer said during an interview with MSNBC’s Chris Matthews on May 24, 2011. "The insurance companies have a 20 percent to 30 percent overhead."
"One thing Americans do buy with this extra spending is an administrative overhead load that is huge by international standards. The McKinsey Global Institute estimated that excess spending on “health administration and insurance” accounted for as much as 21 percent of the estimated total excess spending ($477 billion in 2003). Brought forward, that 21 percent of excess spending on administration would amount to about $120 billion in 2006 and about $150 billion in 2008. It would have been more than enough to finance universal health insurance this year.
The McKinsey team estimated that about 85 percent of this excess administrative overhead can be attributed to the highly complex private health insurance system in the United States.
"""
and
"A second, more recent study of administrative costs in the American and Canadian health systems was published in 2003 by Steffie Woolhandler and David Himmelstein in The New England Journal of Medicine in 2003. The study used a measure of administrative costs that includes not only the insurer’s costs, but also the costs borne by employers, health-care providers and governments – but not the value of the time patients spent claiming reimbursement. These authors estimated that in 1999, Americans spent $1,059 per capita on administration compared with only $307 in purchasing power parity dollars (PPP $) spent in Canada.
"
____________________________________________________________________________""Results
In 1999, health administration costs totaled at least $294.3 billion in the United States, or $1,059 per capita, as compared with $307 per capita in Canada. After exclusions, administration accounted for 31.0 percent of health care expenditures in the United States and 16.7 percent of health care expenditures in Canada. Canada's national health insurance program had overhead of 1.3 percent; the overhead among Canada's private insurers was higher than that in the United States (13.2 percent vs. 11.7 percent). Providers' administrative costs were far lower in Canada.
Between 1969 and 1999, the share of the U.S. health care labor force accounted for by administrative workers grew from 18.2 percent to 27.3 percent. In Canada, it grew from 16.0 percent in 1971 to 19.1 percent in 1996. (Both nations' figures exclude insurance-industry personnel.) ""
It's a giant shakedown, not a bit different than the gangsters selling 'protection'
against hoodlums breaking your knees.
""
Journal of Medicine - When Sharon Smith chose an out-of-network specialist to perform a complicated jaw surgery on her teenage son last May she knew it would cost her more. But she was not expecting $15,000.
Consumers have long complained about the cost of going outside their health plan's network, but Smith encountered a new twist: A growing number of insurers have changed the way they calculate reimbursements to shift more of the expense to patients.""
"Insurance companies have driven the costs so high that you now have to buy their
'insurance' as 'protection' against your financial back getting broken.
"Some of the most compelling evidence that third-party payments alter the use of medical resources comes from a study performed under the auspices of the RAND Corporation in the late 1970s.(8) That study assigned families to four health insurance plans with differing coinsurance provisions and deductibles. Coinsurance is the percentage of medical bills paid out-of-pocket by the patient. The deductible measures the maximum total dollar amount that a family will pay out-of-pocket before the plan will drop the coinsurance requirement and pick up the entire medical bill. Some families had zero coinsurance, meaning that the plan paid all of their medical bills, while other families had to pay up to 95 percent of the cost of their medical bills, until their bills reached a total deductible level of $1,000 in 1973 dollars, which is the equivalent of approximately $2,850 in today's dollars.(9)
( a graph is here in the article, it doesn't cut&paste)
The RAND researchers observed how the different coinsurance rates influenced the use of medical resources by 2,500 families for three to five years. They found very pronounced changes in the use of medical resources, depending on the extent of third-party payments. In particular, families with no coinsurance (complete third-party payments) used 53 percent more hospital services (measured in dollars) and 63 percent more visits to doctors, drugs, and the like than did the group that paid 95 percent coinsurance. Overall, the total use of medical resources was 58 percent greater for the group with no coinsurance. Thus, there is clear indication that the use of medical resources by patients varies dramatically with the existence of third-party payment mechanisms. ""...
..."Conclusion
The moral of this story is crystal clear: third-party payment mechanisms have raised the total consumption of medical resources to unprecedented levels. The excessive use of medical resources due to third-party payments was estimated to be over $300 billion and the excessive administrative costs to be in the vicinity of $33 billion.
To lower the currently very large medical expenditures in the United States, the third-party payment system must be reined in. Putting the patient back in control of the medical purchasing decision is the most effective way to control third-party mechanisms, while still providing a safety net for Americans.
The worst policy that we could follow would be to increase third-party payments and reduce copayments. Yet that is exactly what is proposed by the Clinton administra tion. The evidence makes it abundantly clear that the current increase in medical bills will only be exacerbated by the Clinton plan and that rising costs will quickly run into the spending caps contained in the Clinton plan. That plan would be greatly improved if it were to impose high copayments on patients instead of low copayments, and if it were to keep predictable and relatively inexpensive medical costs, such as dentistry and eye care, out of the thirdparty payment system. But even if those changes were made, the Clinton plan would still create a large government bureaucracy controlling and limiting consumer choices, and it still would contain the dreadful idea of spending caps as a means of reducing medical costs. ""
""So what is financialization anyway? It is the process by which something very ordinary (say, a TV set) becomes financed. In doing so there is inherently created the use (and usually the abuse) of leverage.
What is leverage? Leverage is simply the ability to act as though you have much more of something than you really do. For example, you can use leverage to pry off the lid on a beer bottle. Your raw strength is multiplied by the lever (the bottle opener) to lift the cap.
But note that there is no free lunch. While the opener may multiply the force applied to the cap, the distance the opener moves is proportionally reduced compared to the movement of your hand.
In economics, leverage is the use of debt to pretend to have more economic surplus (that is, purchasing power) than you really have...
Let's take a TV set. If you save up the money to buy one, then go into the store and pay for it, you now own a TV set. There is no leverage involved; you took your economic surplus from working (which you didn't need for food, energy, shelter and clothing - thus, it's a true surplus to you) and you expend it on a TV set. The transaction is simple; once it is completed there are no residual effects. If you lose your job the next day, you still have the TV set and will forever more until it either breaks, wears out or you dispose of it in some way.
But what if the TV set costs $500 and you only have $100? Well, you could financialize your acquisition of the TV. That is, you could borrow $400 by buying the TV on installment payments with a $100 down payment, and now you have a TV.
Or do you?
Actually, the bank (or the store) owns a TV. You may have custody of a TV set, but you don't own a TV set. You owe a debt. You have promised to work tomorrow to cover the expense of the television. You don't own the TV until you pay it off.
This is all fine and well up until you lose your job. Now the bank comes after you and wants the TV back, plus whatever deficiency there is on reselling the TV set to cover your debt. You suddenly discover, much to your chagrin, that you never owned it at all.
This all sounds pretty ordinary, except that the economic effect of financializing that transaction isn't, in fact, ordinary at all.
See, in economics there is this thing called "supply and demand." The more demand there is for something with a given supply, the higher the price tends to be. In ordinary times a gallon jug of drinking water in a store is a dollar, and from the tap it costs so little we don't ordinarily put a price on it. Yet if there was just a hurricane, and there is no fresh water available, what would the price of that same gallon be? Ah, now we have much demand and very short supply, and as such the price will be quite dear. Perhaps the price of that water might be several gallons of gasoline (for the seller's generator, of course.)
So what has happened to our economy over the last three decades?
In short, things that never should have been became financialized. And as the goods and services became financialized, demand was shifted upward - people were made "able" to allegedly "buy" things they could not otherwise afford. The expected response in the marketplace to such a thing, predicted by basic economics, was that prices would rise.
Prices, in fact, did exactly what you'd expect.
""
and from"The Quiet Coup
The crash has laid bare many unpleasant truths about the United States. One of the most alarming, says a former chief economist of the International Monetary Fund, is that the finance industry has effectively captured our government—a state of affairs that more typically describes emerging markets, and is at the center of many emerging-market crises. If the IMF’s staff could speak freely about the U.S., it would tell us what it tells all countries in this situation: recovery will fail unless we break the financial oligarchy that is blocking essential reform. And if we are to prevent a true depression, we’re running out of time.
By Simon Johnson "
CORNELL JOURNAL OF LAW AND PUBLIC POLICY [Vol. 21:175
ESSAY
“CAPTURE” IN FINANCIAL REGULATION:
CAN WE CHANNEL IT TOWARD THE
COMMON GOOD?
Lawrence G. Baxter*
Given the “situational” context of financial regulation and the deep
structures that shape and influence regulatory outcomes, it seems that the
financial regulatory system is suffering from deep capture. The power of
the financial industry—particularly that of the big banking conglomerates—
looms large in the shaping of general public policy and specific
regulatory action. This is evident from the phone logs of current and former Treasury Secretaries,50 the very visible revolving doors between
the SEC51 and other financial regulators and industry,52 the origin and
composition of the Federal Reserve Banks,53 statements by the new Chairman of the House Financial Services Committee,54 the opposition
by the Treasury Department and other senior members of the Obama
Administration to the imposition of concentration limits on an unstable
and publicly subsidized industry,55 and the inexplicable disregard of
powerful, contrarian economic studies by the Treasury Department that
favors allowing continued growth by gargantuan, high-risk financial conglomerates.
56 Political spending by the nation’s largest banks alone
dwarfs the lobbying efforts of most other sectors.57 However, the spending
influence does not end there: deep capture seems to be nourished by
collateral institutional interests.58 For example, the “deregulatory” position
of the financial industry has been heavily supported with allied lobbying
by groups such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.59
Furthermore, the particular processes involved in financial regulation
suggest that the opportunity for capture might be greater than ever in
financial services, particularly in relation to large-scale financial institutions,
which have very deep engagements with the regulators. Banks are
not only subject to rules that govern their structure, operations, and activities
in advance but they are also subject to ongoing monitoring in a
manner that involves broad regulatory discretion.60 One need not be totally
cynical61 to recognize that the highly discretionary and continuous
nature of bank regulation is dependent on and nurtures an environment in
which the regulators and the regulated are engaged in such close, daily
relationships as to nurture intense mutual empathy—perhaps even a kind
of “transference”62—between the two sides. This codependence might
seem inevitably to lead to a mutual identification of interests and a manifestation
of deep, if not surface, capture. Worse, it might even lead to the
kind of lop-sided relationship baldly asserted by incoming House Financial
Services Committee Chairman Spencer Bachus in remarks to the Alabama
newspaper Birmingham News: “the regulators are there to serve
the banks.”63 In other words, bank supervision provides even more opportunity
for the kind of influence that leads to capture than traditional
regulation itself.64
Yet this codependence is a fact of political life. In the face of such
reality, instead of trying to eliminate the existence of ideology and attempts
to influence, it would be more effective to create, strengthen, and enhance countervailing checks and balances. We must do something to
try to counteract the massive dominance of the financial industry in our public life.
......
The connection between regulators and industry is the area that
seems to need the most urgent attention...
Until we make such a resolution, however,
pointing out and lamenting regulatory capture adds little to the overall
debate, and it only makes us angry, cynical, or despondent.
145
"The stakes couldn't be much higher," former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle (D-S.D.) tells FRONTLINE about what was involved in the landmark health care legislation. "We're talking about almost 20 percent of our gross domestic product today, $2.5 trillion. Literally tens, hundreds of millions of dollars are spent on lobbying. Every special interest has their oar in the water."
To navigate the process of health reform, President Obama turned to his chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, a consummate deal maker, who helped stock the West Wing with an all-star lineup of congressional insiders. But almost immediately, a key member of the team was forced to step down, and the country's greatest champion of health reform, Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.), was sidelined with incurable brain cancer. The administration's hopes for reform rested with Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.), the powerful head of the Senate Finance Committee, who also happened to be one of the Senate's top recipients of special interest money from the health care industry.
The White House encouraged Baucus to quietly negotiate deals with the insurance lobby, drug companies and other special interest groups, despite promises to run a different kind of White House. "The president said that having people at the table is better than having them throw stuff at the table," White House Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer tells FRONTLINE.
Read more: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/obamasdeal/view/#ixzz1rQ2Oebx6
jim hardy said:i guess i got off topic. But sources abound, here's a couple.
Let's take those one at a time. In reverese order.
(3)
Medicare overhead costs are ~ 1 to 2 %. private insurance overhead costs are ~ 20 X higher .
Source:
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-m...a-boxer-says-medicare-overhead-far-lower-pri/
Politifact said:...Adjusted estimates for Medicare’s administrative costs cited by the Urban Institute, a think tank that does research on issues such as poverty and economics, range from 3.6 percent to 5 percent,
...
Meanwhile, Boxer’s 20 percent-to-30 percent figure for the private sector is more squishy. Some plans have overhead rates that high, but only a fraction do, and the industry-wide average is quite a bit lower -- 11 to 12 percent.
jim hardy said:Another source:
http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2...ch-part-ii-indefensible-administrative-costs/
Another source
http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMsa022033
____________________________________________________________________________
(2)
http://www.ncnp.org/journal-of-medicine/1023-insurers-raise-out-of-network-costs.html
So you pay insurance to keep the hospital from billing you as if you had the money of a Carnegie or a Buffet.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
(1)
Insurance companies operate on a percentage of cash flow so higher cost is in their interest. More bureaucracy and paperwork both drives consumers out of the loop and raises costs for providers(they have to build an equivalent bureaucracy) so you have two symbiotic bureaucracies feeding from one another. Were the consumers still in the loop we wouldn't stand for it.
Source:
http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa211.html
I would add that the concept of "Financialization" is a psychological player acting on the consumers.
Finanacialization http://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=195434
Same goes for medical care. Substitute insurance company for bank, and, there you go.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Lastly they've taken over gov't:
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2009/05/the-quiet-coup/7364/
and from
www.lawschool.cornell.edu/research/JLPP/upload/Baxter-final-2.pdf
They even bought the white house. see
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/obamasdeal/
That's how i see it. If you aren't outraged you aren't paying attention.
End rant. But i feel better.
Karl Denninger said:The demand you must issue is that all the special protections that are currently afforded by government are to be dropped. The government props under home lending are taken away. The government mandates that people be treated medically irrespective of ability to pay and are able to cost-shift their care to others go away. The non-dischargable nature of student loan debt goes away. And government protection prohibiting the resale of anything someone owns that is legitimate (e.g. a truck load of Viagra) goes away.
ThinkToday said:So, I’d like to look at this a few of different ways. 1) Quotes and citations of period work the author missed that would lend a different view or meaning. 2) The Constitution has a mechanism for allowing change, so does a court have the power to expand that meaning beyond the original intent? 3) The separation of powers vests the three branches with distinct powers, so can one branch usurp the powers of the others?
With respect to number 2 and 3, I would argue no. The courts were intended to interpret law and not make it. The courts are bound to interpreting the law’s meaning based on the Record. By definition, only the legislature legislates and only they can create or change “law”. The Executive can only agree (approve) or reject (veto) a law. The Executive is bound to enforce with equal vigor the laws it likes and dislikes.
reason - i read that, what was it, 2200 page bill . At least one version of it. The entire last 400 pages were all about Indian affairs and i thought it was a hastily thrown together mess. I wrote my congress lady advising her it reeked of haste and chaos and special interest pandering. She voted "for" anyway and was not re-elected.Or, they could do the more sensible thing - strike down the entire law, detailing the rationale for their decision, and letting Congress do the editing (which definitely won't be happening this election year).
though i would go further and get "for profit" insurance out of the system.To change the system, the employer-only tax break has to be either eliminated or extended to everyone independent of the employer. Agreed?
I will express to Justice Kennedy my belief the mandate would be handing private industry the de facto power to levy taxes, a power reserved to congress and the states..Or, there's still the possibility the SCOTUS could uphold the ACA.