BREAKING NEWS: Pres. John Adams a SOCIALIST -- Mandates Sailors Purchase Insurance!!!

[FourScore]

President John Adams signed a law mandating employed sailors to purchase healthcare insurance
by LaurenMonica
Mon Mar 29, 2010 at 04:41:05 AM PDT

While, 14 state AG are wasting taxpayers money with frivolous lawsuits against this Health Care Reform Bill singed into law. They are arguing that the so-called "MANDATE" is unconstitutional. Here a sample of their complaint via CNN :

(CNN) -- Officials from 14 states have gone to court to block the historic overhaul of the U.S. health care system that President Obama signed into law Tuesday, arguing the law's requirement that individuals buy health insurance violates the Constitution. Thirteen of those officials filed suit in a federal court in Pensacola, Florida, minutes after Obama signed the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. The complaint calls the act an "unprecedented encroachment on the sovereignty of the states" and asks a judge to block its enforcement. "The Constitution nowhere authorizes the United States to mandate, either directly or under threat of penalty, that all citizens and legal residents have qualifying health care coverage,"the lawsuit states.

Here why their ridiculous lawsuits will end up with a defeat on their side. In fact, those 14 Fools need a quick A lesson in American History, Healthcare and the Constitution.

I just found out that in 1798, the fifth congress passed and President John Adams signed into law "An Act for the Relief of Sick and Disabled Seamen" http://history.nih.gov/research/downloads/1StatL605.pdf authorizing the creation of a marine hospital service, and mandating privately employed sailors to purchase healthcare insurance.

I guess now President John Adams was a tyrant who took away Amercans' freedom or even worse, he was a "SOCIALIST". I wonder if the teabaggers will now scream that President John Adams didn't know the US Constitution. After all, he "just" help writing the US Constitution, Glenn Beck or other T-Baggers are more experts of the US Constitution than John Adams was.

You should read this article titled Our Founding Father's Socialized Healthcare System http://open.salon.com/blog/paul_j_orourke/2009/07/22/our_founding_fathers_socialist_healthcare_system . As mentioned in this article, the law signed by John Adams was a federal government socialized healthcare insurance funded by a tax, that was withheld from the sailor’s pay, and then turned over to the government by the ship’s owner. This legislation also created America’s first payroll tax amounted to slightly over 1% of the sailor’s wages.

In fact, a ship’s owner was required to deduct 20 cents from each sailor’s monthly pay and forward those receipts to the service, which in turn provided injured sailors hospital care. An injured or sick sailor would make a claim, his record of payments would be confirmed, and he would be given a "chit" for admission to the local hospital. Some of these healthcare facilities were private, but in the larger ports Federal maritime hospitals were built. A failure to pay or account properly was discouraged by requiring a law violating owner or ship's captain to pay a 100 dollar fine...

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2010/3/29/851987/-President-John-Adams-signed-a-law-mandating-employed-sailors-to-purchase-healthcare-insurance

[AnArmyVeteran]

1. Very interesting! Thank you!

[Leopolds Ghost]

23. BREAKING NEWS: Pres. John Adams is a LIBERAL -- he passed the Alien and Sedition Acts!

Which are of course LIBERAL acts.


NOT!

:sarcasm:

[coti]

2. This is, again, not the same as mandating purchases from third parties.

This is, as you point out, much like a single payer system, for which we already have precedent- Medicare.

[itsrobert]

3. How is this "BREAKING NEWS" when the same thing was posted last night?

:shrug:

[FourScore]

4. Sorry. I haven't been around in a while. It just got posted this morning at DK.

I also meant it rather tongue-in-cheek.

[TreasonousBastard]

18. Twice.

[JuniperLea]

36. Some of us have a life outside DU...

I don't DU on the weekend at all, for example, and I appreciate not having to rummage through pages and pages of palaver.

[OneTenthofOnePercent]

5. The difference is choice.

People chose to be sailors. The had to pay for insurance.
You choose to drive a car on public roads. You have to pay for insurance.

Mandating that people buy insurance for simply being alive...
Are you supposed to kill yourself (or face a penalty) if you don't want to buy insurance?

[YOY]

6. Quick...someone tell Texas!

They'll be down to Revere, Washington, and Monroe before long.

And they'll be editing Washington severely.

[blindpig]

7. So, a dead rich guy makes it OK. n/t

[Cirque du So-What]

8. Not just ANY dead rich guy

but one of the founding fathers - an actual link to the mindset of those who actually authored that document. Strict constructionalists will have their work cut out for them trying to negate this language...and so will all those who attempt to derail HCR even now that it's been signed into law. How's that gripey, futility-ey thing workin' out for ya?

[coti]

12. You're arguing from a partisan, political approach rather than thinking critically.

The above article, in which sailors were mandated to buy insurance from the government- just as in a better, much more recent and useful example of the same concept: Medicare- and then treated by both private and federal hospitals via that federal insurance, is easily distinguished from mandating the purchase of insurance from private, for-profit insurance companies.

In other words, this is good (further) precedent for a single-payer system, or even a public option, but not so much for the corporatist HCR bill that was just signed into law. You're blind to that, though, because the ignorant Teabaggers, although for all the wrong reasons, happen to be against the bill. You're taking a political approach to an important constitutional issue.

[blindpig]

14. What I said the first time.

The 'Founding Fathers' were for the most part a bunch of rich guys looking out first and foremostly for themselves.

You are simply excusing a reactionary mandate with a reference to another reactionary mandate.

[Leopolds Ghost]

25. One of the founding fathers who passed the Alien and Sedition acts.

Which you would support if they were still in force and benefited your team.

[Cirque du So-What]

43. 'your team?'

What team are YOU on, if not the Democratic one?

[Bluenorthwest]

9. But the money collected went to the government

which built hospitals, not to a private Insurance Company. Private insurance for 'accidents' did not exist until the mid 1850s. For 'health' until later than that.

[rocktivity]

10. Careful what you wish for, folks

if you win, Obama may be "forced" to institute some kind of public option--and you'd have no one to blame but yourselves!

:rofl:
rocktivity

[unpossibles]

11. good timing

although I doubt it will convince anyone who refuses to belief Obama is even legally a citizen/President, etc.

[optimator]

13. coercion is tyranny yes

Nothing will ever make mandated insurance acceptable.

[MattBaggins]

46. How about forcing people to pay for other Americans to

go to foreign lands and kill people; and do this in their name?

[DatManFromNawlins]

15. How many idiots do we need to bring up non-analogous examples?

Apparently, not enough.

[mod mom]

20. The GOP lauds Federalist Adams and yet it sounds like he just might be more of a "socialist"

than President Obama.

from the diary:

You should read this article titled Our Founding Father's Socialized Healthcare System . As mentioned in this article, the law signed by John Adams was a federal government socialized healthcare insurance funded by a tax, that was withheld from the sailor’s pay, and then turned over to the government by the ship’s owner. This legislation also created America’s first payroll tax amounted to slightly over 1% of the sailor’s wages.

In fact, a ship’s owner was required to deduct 20 cents from each sailor’s monthly pay and forward those receipts to the service, which in turn provided injured sailors hospital care. An injured or sick sailor would make a claim, his record of payments would be confirmed, and he would be given a "chit" for admission to the local hospital. Some of these healthcare facilities were private, but in the larger ports Federal maritime hospitals were built. A failure to pay or account properly was discouraged by requiring a law violating owner or ship's captain to pay a 100 dollar fine.

Maybe instead of filing non-sense, these incompetent attorneys general should rather read or educate themselves. It's not unconstitutional to impose a health care Mandate.

CHAP. LXXVII – An Act for the Relief of Sick and Disabled Seamen Section 1. Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled - That from and after the first day of September next, the master or owner of every ship or vessel of the United States, arriving from a foreign port into any port of the United States, shall, before such ship or vessel shall be admitted to an entry, render to the collector a true account of the number of seamen, that shall have been employed on board such vessel since she was last entered at any port in the United States,-and shall pay to the said collector, at the rate of twenty cents per month for every seaman so employed; which sum he is hereby authorized to retain out of the wages of such seamen

Ouch-that's gotta hurt. :hi:

[Leopolds Ghost]

28. President Adams was conservative. That said, this act has nothing to do with mand. indiv. coverage.

This is a Medicare style act being appallingly used to promote a Reaganite bill. Just because Dems are doing the research on this doesn't not make it a Reaganite bill.

[ashling]

16. I have posted on this before

and used it in an LTTE last year to refute the myth about the founders. You people really should pay more attention to my posts (LOL)

The Act didn't mandate health insurance as such. It was more in the nature of a medicare payroll tax.

It established hospitals for seamen and authorized taxation to pay for it. Not only did John Adams sign the original act, but the Congress that passed it was comprised largely of signers of the Const. and veterans of the Rev War. Also, amendments were later passed and signed by Thomas Jefferson.

Operators of merchant vessels (domestic and foreign) had to pay a tax to a hospital district. The tax was based upon the number of seamen on that vessel and it authorized the amounts to be taken from the employee's pay.

[mod mom]

17. Thanks, just sent this to Rachel and asked her to cover it! Adams, a radical socialist...

whodda thought ;)

[Leopolds Ghost]

21. You guys have no idea what the word "socialism" means.

[mod mom]

22. I was being facetious using the teabaggers claims.

I thought it was so obvious that the :sarcasm: wasn't necessary.

[Leopolds Ghost]

27. Well, the mandate is odious precisely because it's corporatist, not socialist.

We can't buy into their memes. It doesn't matter what they think -- they are trying to move the debate EVEN FURTHER to the right.

[Renew Deal]

31. Most of the opposition to this bill by the "left" has been over cheap ideological arguments

People were arguing for a "public option" that they couldn't define. Your post is evidence of this. You don't have a problem with forcing people to pay for care. You have a problem with it being paid to private corporations.

I don't agree that this bill has moved the debate to the right. It has made it acceptable to believe that there should be some sort of government run system for all. It will be a litmus test for Democratic candidates going into the future. There will be a "Medicare for all" type option in the future. It's going to take more time.

[Leopolds Ghost]

35. Interesting. You put the "left" in scare quotes.

"People were arguing for a "public option" that they couldn't define. Your post is evidence of this."

People, like... all the patsies your wing of the party duped into advocating for this bill because it included a public option that you knew was a show pony that wasn't going to be in the final bill?

"You don't have a problem with forcing people to pay for care. You have a problem with it being paid to private corporations."

You have no idea what I have a problem with. "Forcing people to pay for care" in the ER and elsewhere individually, by the way, is neither insurance nor socialization. In fact it is privatization and extremely right wing, and individual mandates are an inherently Reaganite concept, as Mitt Romney and Gingrich said over 10 years ago.

[mod mom]

45. I agree. I believe the mandates will lead to a "medicare for all" government

program and will evidentially lead to a national health program. What was passed wan't the end product but a start and it's up to us to push for it's continuation.

[Leopolds Ghost]

19. This is Mandatory PRIVATIZATION, NOT SOCIALIZATION.

You keep using that word "socialized". I do not think it means what you think it means.

[Renew Deal]

29. He's not arguing with you

He's arguing with teabaggers.

[Leopolds Ghost]

33. What would Mark Twain have said about arguing with teabaggers? "Argue with a fool..."

I suppose we could have debates on DU about how the teabaggers are Social Darwinists, thereby invalidating their claim that cavemen coexisted with dinosaurs, by citing examples of "sensible" Social Darwinists such as the robber barons, thus providing support for the claim that "social" darwinism is a liberal concept.

Ironically, the debate between the DLC / HCR proponents and the teabaggers is a debate between Victorian conservatism (put the poor in workhouses for their own betterment if they can't pay their debts) and social darwinism (let them starve). But the victorians never forced the urban poor to purchase insurance or be drawn up for tax evasion.

[barbiegeek]

24. REC it up

This awesome make it viral

[Leopolds Ghost]

26. duplicate n/t

[berni_mccoy]

30. There's a legal difference. Military can be ordered to do things regardless of Constitutional rights

Don't get me wrong. I believe the lawsuits are going to utterly fail. But ordering a sailor to do something and enforcing a requirement on civilians are two entirely different things.

[M155Y_A1CH]

32. The rhetoric is all wrong for this instance

Mandating the purchase of private/ for profit anything is authoritarian.

Mandating participation in beneficial government programs is socialist.

BTW How do I start my own insurance company?

[laughingliberal]

34. Sounds like it was a single payer system. nt

[Leopolds Ghost]

37. Everyone knows single payer and individual mandate are equivalent.

One is liberal, one is Reaganite, but they both affect people who already have insurance the same way.

Many of these people would rather keep their existing plans while forcing others to purchase existing plans in the name of "ensuring that everyone has the same access to insurance I do."

[Lorien]

40. Except that they don't. A cadillac plan costing $1,800 a month gives you far

greater access to healthcare than an "affordable" $300 a month policy with a 10k deductible. How does a person making $24k a year come up with 10k for the deductible?

[laughingliberal]

44. Except that one actually can control costs and provide access to health care for the money and the

other wastes the money we pay on CEO salaries and shareholder dividends.

[Lorien]

42. Sad to think that many here can't understand the differences. nt

[JuniperLea]

38. Thanks for posting this!

I see you've been knocked around up-thread for posting this... not all of us live at DU 24/7. I don't DU on the weekend at all, for example, and I appreciate not having to rummage through pages and pages of palaver.

[Leopolds Ghost]

39. The Adams bill was single payer. n/t

[JuniperLea]

41. He didn't have the bullshit to battle that we did...

I think we're going to do fine... the foot is in the door... there's no going back.