Florida Judge Strikes Down Obamacare
By Melancton Smith • Monday January 31, 2011 3:31 PM PDT • 2 Comments
Today, a U.S. District Court in Florida held that the individual mandate found in the Obamacare law is an unconstitutional use of the Commerce power. Judge Roger Vinson emphasized that this was not a decision on the wisdom of the law, but solely whether Congress has the power to pass it. If we accept the expansive interpretation offered by the Government (that Congress can regulate any activity or inactivity that could possibly impact the national economy), then, as Judge Vinson observed:
Congress could require that people buy and consume broccoli at regular intervals, not only because the required purchases will positively impact interstate commerce, but also because people who eat healthier tend to be healthier, and are thus more productive and put less of a strain on the health care system.
Rather than rewrite history, Judge Vinson turned to the background of our Revolution:
It is difficult to imagine that a nation which began, at least in part, as the result of opposition to a British mandate giving the East India Company a monopoly and imposing a nominal tax on all tea sold in America would have set out to create a government with the power to force people to buy tea in the first place. If Congress can penalize a passive individual for failing to engage in commerce, the enumeration of powers in the Constitution would have been in vain for it would be “difficult to perceive any limitation on federal power,” and we would have a Constitution in name only.
This is the second decision against the individual mandate and is well done. Hats off to Judge Vinson for having the courage to strike down this clearly unconstitutional act.
Tags: Constitution, Healthcare, Law, Liberty, Nanny State, Presidential Power, Regulation, Welfare 
The individual mandate should really be repealed but I think the good provisions must be preserved. The repeal of the provision which prohibits denying health care insurance because of a pre-existing condition would cause many difficulties to people diagnosed with cancer or other serious medical conditions.
Heather | Feb 2, 2011 | Reply
Nurse Pelosi and Dr. Obama on Health Care Reform
Picture this. It’s early September. The city’s courageous Leader, crusader for truth and justice, victor of dozens of battles, during the past two and half centuries, is rushed to the big city emergency room with fluid around his heart. His pericardium is filled with pus and the tension in this sack is compressing each heartbeat The Leader (of the free world) is dying right before our very eyes. Immediate, meaningful action must be taken now!
Enter the dapper, slick talking, new emergency room chief. Let’s call him Doctor Obama. Everyone in the emergency room on this dark, gloomy, late afternoon knows that quick, decisive action must be taken, if the Leader is to be saved. But what to do?
It is for sure that the Leader’s last doctors, Dr. Bush and his trusty, ever-present partner, Dr. Cheney, certainly didn’t know what to do. The multiple procedures that Doctors Bush and Cheney had done to the Leader, over the preceding 8 years had, in every instance, made the Leader worse…much worse!!
Nevertheless, Doctors Bush and Cheney and their corrupt, white collar colleagues had made enormous sums of money off the Leader, with all their clever CPT codes and duplicate billings But now the Leader is but a mere shadow of himself…. the Leader is dying!!
But what to do? Up steps the dysfunctional emergency room charge nurse. Let’s call her Charge Nurse Pelosi. Nurse Pelosi, with that fixed and constant smile, says to Dr. Obama, “let me handle this…leave everything up to me. I’ll tell you what you need to do to save the Leader.” she says with that dumb looking, inappropriate smile of hers.
It seems that Nurse Pelosi and Nurse Jane Harman, both ranking members of the hospital’s Executive Committee, had been complicit of flagrant, repeated malpractice for their part in covering up a series of grotesque, unacceptable procedures performed on a number of Arab and Persian patients by Doctors Bush and Cheney. In order to defraud these patients’ Medicaid and Medicare Insurance of enormous sums of money. In stark contradiction to the hospital’s bylaws. Keeping this in mind, Nurse Pelosi’s and Nurse Harman’s recommendations, in the Leaders case, surely could not be considered legitimate.
Anyway, Nurse Pelosi, with that fixed and constant smile, says to Dr. Obama, “now is the time for health care reform. Doctors Bush and Cheney have totally screwed up our health care system. The system is too expensive. And provides inadequate care”. (As if air head Pelosi would know the difference between quality care and inadequate care.)
Nurse Pelosi says to Dr. Obama, “here’s what we are going to do! Send down to the ghettos and bring up some of those half way doctors who can barely speak English. Along with their cadres of lawyers and administrators.…And do this STAT! We’ll get these guys in here and let them take care of the Leader’s pericardial tamponade. It will be a lot cheaper. And will give us time to rove around the city giving slick speeches…convincing the people that we are doing everything possible to save the leader, while simultaneously reducing health care costs”.
Nurse Pelosi rambled on…“Look we’d be saving money…and maybe even getting the Leader through this current crisis. While simultaneously establishing a new health care system in which administrators, health care lawyers, physician assistants and nurse practitioners will flourish. In a new health care system in which they can, finally, become autonomous. Like in Russia and Cuba. You don’t see the Russians and the Cubans wasting all their resources trying to save patients who are (eventually) going to die anyway, do you?”
George Meredith MD
Virginia Beach
Footnote:
Medicaid and Medicare fraud cases with multimillion dollar settlements: CVS, Merck, Health South, Walgreen’s, Seven NY hospitals, Smith Kline, Damon Labs, Tenet Health, Hewlett Packard, Pfizer, Tenet Health, Tap Pharmaceuticals, HCA, National Health Labs, Quorum Health, Corning Met Pharmaceuticals, etc, etc….talk about make work for hoards of administrators and health care lawyers.
George Meredith MD | Aug 18, 2011 | Reply