universal healthcare

[Jester]

The accounting trick on this bill is that the benefits are delayed four years, but the increases in taxes begin immediately. After that, it becomes unsustainable.

The projected savings actually increase after the first 10 years, do they not? In what way would that be unsustainable, at least relative to the status quo?

Perhaps you'll have to show me in some more detail what this "accounting trick" entails.

Perhaps infamous. 38 states are moving forward to the supreme court with a challenge to this laws constitutionality.

You mean that some random Republican legislator in each of 38 states has put forward the idea? Because that's a long, long way from 38 states "moving forward to the supreme court with a challenge." Pending bills are like being nominated for a Nobel Prize - any idiot can put an idea in the ring. The question is whether it goes anywhere.

The largest issue, which we talked about earlier, is that the federal government is forcing the citizens to purchase a service. The progressive don't really care about that part either, since if the court strikes down that part of the law, it just undoes the "favor" that private insurance had in the bill, and forces them into bankruptcy sooner.

I don't like the individual mandate, but without some form of single-payer, which is far and away my preference, it is a necessary component of reform. Otherwise, adverse selection will destroy the system before it gets off the ground. If that is unconstitutional, then I suggest that a lot of states need to take a long, hard look at their auto insurance legislation. Not to mention the government "forcing" people to buy all sorts of stuff they don't want, through taxation. Did the good folk of Massachusetts really want the Iraq war? I somehow doubt it, and yet, they own it just the same as the rest of the country.

-Jester