Since Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia clearly isn't going to take the time to actually read the health care reform law before he decides whether or not it's constitutional, maybe he and a couple of his buddies on the High Court can catch a screening of The Hunger Games, the movie about children battling each other to the death in a futuristic America, renamed Panem.
"You really want us to go through these 2,700 pages?" Scalia asked during arguments on the constitutionality of the law last week. "Is this not totally unrealistic? That we are going to go through this enormous bill item by item and decide each one?"
He joked that spending time to read the Affordable Care Act before the Court decides its fate would put him in danger of violating the Eighth Amendment's ban on cruel and unusual punishment. LOL, Judge.
Cruel and unusual punishment is crucial to the Hunger Games, but it only lasts 142 minutes and no one in the audience gets hurt, mitigating anybody's risk of violating the Constitution. The movie portrays a government completely disconnected from the people who struggle every day for the most basic elements of survival, including medical care. Only the wealthy residents of the Capitol have access to hospitals and modern medicine, which, fortunately for them, seems to have a cure for everything.
This society-gone-bad scenario of denying basic care to citizens based on their income or social status seems on the big screen not only cruel and unusual but even incomprehensible. I can just hear Justice Scalia asking, again, "Is this not totally unrealistic?"
Guess what, Judge, it's not. In fact, it's occurring every day in what is still called the United States. And if you and your colleagues decide to scuttle ObamaCare, it won't be long before we have PanemCare. For many Americans, we already do.
Don't believe me? Here's an offer. Travel with me later this month to Sullivan County, Tennessee, where I grew up, to witness an event that I'm betting you and other denizens of Washington's northwest quadrant can hardly imagine.
For three days beginning April 13, Remote Area Medical (RAM), an organization that flies American doctors to remote, third-world villages, will be hosting a massive outdoor clinic in the infield of the famous Bristol Motor Speedway. Ironically (or not), Bristol is an Appalachian Mountain town, part of what the Hunger Games calls District 12. The heroine hails from District 12, just like me.
Justice Scalia will have to be an early riser to get the full effect of a scene as surreal as anything Hollywood could dream up. Here's the advice RAM offers on its website about the Bristol event:
Be sure to arrive early. The clinic opens at 6:00 a.m., and patients are seen on a first-come, first-served basis. Lines can be long and start early in the morning. Numbers will be given out around 3:30 a.m. each day prior to the clinic opening. For the best chance of being seen, plan to arrive by 3:30 a.m. on the day you wish to receive treatment. Be prepared for cool weather and bring snacks. Once registered, be prepared for long waits before being seen by a doctor.
If you travel to Bristol with me, Judge, I'm almost certain you will be a changed man. You will begin to grasp just how dysfunctional and inequitable the U.S. health care system is and why the law you seem determined to declare unconstitutional was deemed necessary. Just knowing that most of RAM's clinics are now held in the United States rather than third world countries should tell you something.
The highway I traveled to a RAM clinic in Wise, Virginia, in 2007 from my parents' home not far from Bristol turned out to be my Road to Damascus. I was so struck by what I saw -- thousands standing in hours-long lines to get care in animal stalls at the Wise County Fairgrounds -- that I quit my job a few months later and began telling the truth. The truth about how health insurance companies really operate and how bad things really are out there for millions of Americans.
Until that day, I had been able to think, talk and write about the U.S. health care system and the uninsured in the abstract, as if real-life human beings were not involved. But when I witnessed what many citizens must go through to receive basic medical care, I could no longer see them as merely numbers on a spreadsheet.
So Justice Scalia, et al. If it's too much of a chore to actually read one of the most important pieces of legislation that will ever cross your desks -- one that will truly mean the difference between life and death for many -- go see the Hunger Games and travel with me to Bristol. It will be good for your constitution. And it might just save all but the very wealthiest of us from PanemCare.
Follow Wendell Potter on Twitter: www.twitter.com/wendellpotter
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What I wish? Is that Pres. Obama could go to this clinic on the 13th, see it for himself and take the cameras (well, they're always with him anyways but you get my point) and let America see how it is. I've never been, but I can try to imagine.
What I find alarming more than anything else, about SCOTUS with regards to this case, is the complete lack of any bipartisanship on the part of certain (cough) members of the court. Scalia didn't even try to hide his sarcasm; didn't even try to mask his own partisanship, in the highest court in the land that we are supposed to depend on for their utmost impartiality. It's gone. That recent poll that shows 75% believe the court is partisan? Bingo. Would I prefer single payer? Of course. But ACA sure beats April 13, doesn't it? I wouldn't even mind so much if we supporters of ACA lost the SCOTUS battle if I just thought it was a non-partisan decision. If it's struck down, there is no way in he!! I'd ever believe that now.
Believe it or not, the role of this APPLELLATE court is to decide the question of law and whether the facts determined in the lower court apply to that law.
The Supreme Court does not create new findings of fact. The findings of fact are determined at the initial trial. Apellate courts ensure that the law was applied correctly to the facts in the case.
So the Supreme Court is not going to re-try the original case, in the same way. Think about it. Soem cases take years of trail testimony and hundreds of thousands of pages of testimony. Do your REALLY expect the few appellate courts to read the voluminous documentary evidence of all the appeals that they accept?
The Supreme Court will rule on specific questions of law, which were presented in the oral arguments. They will undoubtedly read the portions of the ACA that pertain to those questions (ie, the individual mandate and the Medicaid expansion, among other things). They know the job that they are assigned. It's surprising that Mr Potter does not.
Or maybe the cheap political shots are all that count anymore, in online forums or in published commentaries.
How does a clinic in Bristol help him do that?
Furthermore I don't think it was the whole bill he didn't want to read it was that he didn't want to have a different case on every mandate.
But I see a lot of comments here lamenting a court decision that would result in some people (many people) becoming uninsured once again.
But I don't see that as the issue of the moment. What's being decided here is whether the insurance mandate, and possibly the entire law, is constitutional. If a law is unconstitutional, it can't and shouldn't stand. It doesn't matter if some people feel it would benefit society. If a law is deemed unconstitutional, it violates the law of the land.
For example, certain bad words are offensive to many people. But if Congress made a law saying that certain words were banned from our speech and our written documents, it would clearly violate the First Amendment. Just because the end result is good, doesn't mean something is right or legal.
We've got a constitutional argument here. All other concerns and debates are pointless until the Supreme Court decides whether this law is just under our system. That's what these justices were appointed to do. This is why the SC exists.
As the old saying goes, "the ends don't justify the means." Making sure someone can afford a trip to the doctor is a noble end. But if the means is passing laws that violate the Constitution, that's not acceptable. Our leaders need to find a solution that helps people and adheres to our laws.
We've seen time and again that government solutions that involve raising new taxes and spending citizens' money ultimately end in failure.
Social Security was intended to solve the problem of elderly persons with no life savings from becoming destitute. It worked for a few decades while the country was young and growing. But it's a Ponzi scheme destined to collapse when collectors begin to outnumber payers.
Medicare was supposed to solve the healthcare problem for the elderly and Medicaid for the poor. Instead, those systems are more fouled up than ever. Yet they still tax me and my employer to fund them.
Food stamps, public housing, any number of other federal welfare programs. These all had good intentions. But they simply cost the taxpayer and solve no problems. We still have poor people. We still have uninsured people. We still have old people who barely get by. The only thing that ever changes is the amount of money the government wants to take out of your paycheck.
What is so wrong in saying enough? What is wrong in telling people that we don't intend to let you starve or let you fall if you hit a hard time, but it's your job to plan for your retirement, it's your duty to feed your family, it's your responsibility to pay for your own doctor visits?
You said "Social Security was intended to solve the problem of elderly persons with no life savings from becoming destitute."
and...
"Medicare was supposed to solve the healthcare problem for the elderly and Medicaid for the poor."
First off, SS is not broken. Don't fall for the lies. SS is just fine for the next 26 years or so, and all that is needed to fix even that small problem is to take off the income cap. Perhaps do a means test so that rich people aren't collecting SS also when they surely don't need it.
Medicare/Medicaid: one of the most successful programs ever. The costs of running these are a fraction of private health care, and it IS the most effective way, in the long run, to insure everyone and get our costs down. Everyone has to understand that the US cannot continue on the path we are on, and private health care IS the problem. The costs are exorbitant, and they are many times higher than every other developed country that has universal health care. Why should we be paying $2500-3k for an MRI in the US and people in Canada or Sweden etc. pay less than $300? That is just an example of the greed that runs our health care system.
Social Security was a mandate that was enacted. Everyone has to contribute to it. How could the enactment of ACA be seen any different? I DON"T GET IT!!
Require EVERYONE to go onto Obamacare including politicians, govt employees, judges including Supreme Court, President, etc..........It would be voted down TODAY !!!!
Who would not be "on ObamaCare"?
This is the biggest abuse of political power in the history of man! (if it's so great why are there so many exemptions?)
We already cover everyone who shows up an ER. We provide expensive ineffective care that way, but it's provided and paid for by everyone else who uses the system. For those who have assets (e.g a house or car) and no insurance, we provide catastrophic insurance in the form of bankruptcy protection. Meaning that if you show up in the ER after an trauma and need expensive care, you will get it. You will be billed and if you have no insurance, you will be forced into bankruptcy. Then your debts (all of em, not just the medical) will be discharged and the rest of us pick up the tab.
That's an expensive, cruel and ineffective way to provide health care and health care insurance. We need to fix it. This is a good first step.