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Politics : A US National Health Care System? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Brumar89 who wrote (23283)	2/29/2012 5:36:11 PM
From: Lane3	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 42652

So nuns are okay, it's the priests and bishops and folks like that that are the trouble makers, I guess. Back in the day, the nuns were the nurses and the administrators, to the extent that much administration was required. ( Nuns and nurses have both been referred to as sisters). Now, Catholic hospitals are staffed the same way as any other hospital, with medical and administrative personnel who may not even be Catholic laity let alone charity-oriented, poverty-vowed religious. Hospitals now are big business. That doesn't make anyone a trouble maker, but it does make them business and medical professionals like any other business and medical professionals in a big business. That is a far cry from a nun ministering to the lowly sick. Why does anyone have to prove to you X or Y is better than someone else for you to approve of them doing something? All other things being equal, it doesn't. But I have identified a problem with the Church running medical empires, a negative. As a matter of both intellectual integrity and fairness, I was looking for something to put on the positive side of the ledger to weigh against the negative. I was unable to do so and apparently so are you. If Catholic hospitals are closed or sold and we get government running them Why would you assume that the hospitals would be sold to the government? That seems way beyond unlikely to me, unless some were used as veterans' hospitals. will the federal government add value, be better at customer service, management, etc than Catholics were? The new owners, presumably some professional hospital administration outfit, would not need to add value. They are the baseline. The only reason Church ownership needs to add value is to compensate for the negative they introduce in the role department. You admit animosity is a factor but don't like that I notice it. Because you see it encompassing everything. I can compartmentalize it, recognize it as one factor, and analyze other factors independent of it. I have argued against interest often in the course of my role as analyst and consultant. I would be arguing this role problem even if I were a big fan of the Church and its policies. As I pointed out a couple of times, I don't think this is in the best long-term interests of the Church, either, and were I an insider I would be cautioning them. Companies and institutions lose their way and founder all the time when they get away from their core missions. There's nothing here unique to Church hospitals. As long as you see this as another battle in some war against religion, you won't understand that.

To: Brumar89 who wrote (23283)	2/29/2012 5:41:09 PM
From: Peter Dierks	1 Recommendation Respond to of 42652

Gallup poll: 72 percent of Americans call individual mandate ‘unconstitutional’ Published: 12:25 AM 02/29/2012 By Jason Howerton Even among Americans who support President Obama’s health care takeover, a large majority believe that the law is out of step with the U.S. Constitution, a Gallup poll released Monday revealed. The poll, conducted Feb. 20–21, indicates that 72 percent of Americans believe the individual mandate — the government’s requirement for Americans to purchase health insurance — is unconstitutional. Even among Americans who feel the president’s health care law is a “good thing,” 54 percent think the provision is unconstitutional. Just 37 percent of Democrats said the individual health care mandate is constitutional. A mere 6 percent of Republicans and 21 percent of Independents agreed. The poll question read, “As you may know, the Supreme Court will hear arguments next month concerning a requirement in the healthcare law that every American must buy health insurance or pay a fine. Regardless of whether you favor or oppose the law, do you think this requirement is constitutional or unconstitutional?” “The individual mandate is clearly unconstitutional,” Northwestern University Law School Professor Stephen Presser told The Daily Caller. “All you have to do is read the Tenth Amendment, which says the powers not granted to the federal government are reserved to the states … and the founders meant that.” The Obama administration touts the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 as one of its most significant achievements. That law, however, has yet to attract a groundswell of support from a majority of the American people. (RELATED: Full coverage of the health care law) Additionally, 27 U.S. states have filed lawsuits against the federal government over the law, and a new battle is brewing over the so-called “contraception mandate” found in the bill. That provision threatens to force religious employers to provide health insurance that includes access to contraceptives and abortion-inducing medications that conflict with some faiths’ teachings. A critical showdown for President Obama’s health care law will be a series of U.S. Supreme Court oral arguments beginning on March 26. Arguments will span across three days with the individual mandate set for discussion on day two. Some experts remain unconvinced that the individual mandate is an example of the federal government overreaching its authority. Southern Methodist University law professor Nathan Cortez said that because the health care industry makes up one-sixth of the U.S. economy, the U.S. Constitution’s so-called “commerce clause” gives the federal government the authority to enforce the individual mandate. Cortez told TheDC on Tuesday that the commerce clause allows Congress to regulate not only obvious things, such as products sold across state lines, but activities that substantially affect interstate commerce — including modern healthcare – even if the activities themselves are local. “There is not much debate that health care is truly a national problem, not a local one,” he explained. “The mandate is a good way to solve some of our systemic problems [by] creating a more coherent health care system.” The commerce clause is one of the most widely used constitutional arguments in support of the Affordable Care Act, though Presser said it isn’t a very convincing one. “The commerce clause does not in any way attempt to overrule the Tenth Amendment,” he told TheDC. “If the federal government starts mandating that we buy things, they begin to wield a sort of power that the Tenth Amendment can no longer keep in check. And absolute power leads to tyranny.” The Gallup poll, consisting of a random sample of 1,040 people, also revealed that only 24 percent of all Americans — including 40 percent of Democrats and just 3 percent of Republicans — believe that the health care law would improve their families’ health care situations. The poll had a margin of error of plus or minus four percentage points. dailycaller.com