Senator Olympia Snowe supports lawsuit against health care reform law

[Better Believe It]

Olympia Snowe supports lawsuit against health care reform law
by Joe Sudbay
November 22, 2010

Well, all that time wooing Olympia Snowe really paid off for Barack Obama, Rahm Emanuel and Jim Messina. Not only did Snowe end up supporting the GOP filibuster and voting against the bill, she's now supporting a lawsuit against the new law, as is Susan Collins:

Sens. Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins are co-signing an amicus, or friend of the court, brief to be submitted to the federal court in Florida that will hear a constitutional challenge of the federal health care reform law.

The brief was initiated by U.S. Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky and boasts signatures of 30 Senate Republicans. The lawsuit was brought by the attorneys general for several states and the National Federation of Independent Businesses, a small-business trade organization.

At issue is a requirement that U.S. citizens purchase health insurance beginning in 2014 or face a fine -- known as the "individual mandate."

http://www.americablog.com/2010/11/olympia-snowe-supports-lawsuit-against.html

[ProudToBeBlueInRhody]

1. These are the people we are "trying to bring to the table"

Fuck them. It would be nice if Maine would wake the fuck up and toss these two creeps.

[bigwillq]

3. Good post.

:thumbsup:

[Mass]

2. All NE "moderate" Republicans are trying to outdo the Tea Party.

They are so afraid to be primaried.

[napi21]

4. I'm still having a hard to understand why there's so much opposition to the

mandate. If you can't afford it, the gov. will give you assistance, and it will take so many peope out of the ER for things that aren't any emergency and allow them to go to a PCD where hey can be well cared for at 1/10th the cost of an er visit. What's the big problem?

[ixion]

5. The problem(s)

- It is NOT health 'care' reform, it was a massive gift to the insurance industry.

- It is a loss of liberty, at it's core, because it requires someone to purchase a for profit product as a requirement for legal citizenship. And if you have to go the welfare route, that is invasive and dehumanizing, and some people don't want it.

[napi21]

7. Yea you now have the liberty to make ME pay for your ER care.

Boy do I love that! It's NOT a loss of liberty at all. It's mandating that every citizen in the US be part of us all. Everyone screams about the cost of HC, but the absolute most expensive care you can receive is in the ER! To go there for an earache, a bad cole, or any other easily treatable illness is foolish. If you want to own a home, you must pay taxes to support the schools and other local things for the good of all the people in your area. You may not have any kids but it's still to your advantage to educate the children so THEY can become viable citizens and wage earners who pay taxes too.

it helps everybody if everyone has at least basic health CARE coverage. It will reduce costs dramatically too.

I know we all hate the insurance companies but our Current system is based upon HC Insurance coverage, and PLEASE just try to think about the repercussions of eliminating them and going to single payer. I have no idea how many people work in the insurance industry or some support business like fifing forms etc. but you think unemployment is bad now, try adding all thOSE people to the UE roles! It's nice to dream about the european model where taxes are higher but they have basic HC for everybody, but it's simply not practical here. At least not in the foreseeable future. It's unfair to everyone for peope to refuse HC coverage that they have to pay for thus dumping their serious problems on the rest of us.

I would think Snowe & Collins would realize that.

[girl gone mad]

13. You should do some digging into the actual statistics.

Uncompensated care accounts for a very tiny portion of health care costs, and almost half of all uncompensated care comes from insured patients. It's unlikely you are paying anything for an uninsured person's visit to the ER.

You also assume that uninsured people go to the ER when they get sick. In fact, most don't. This is actually one of the few market forces that's helped to contain health care costs - that is, so many uninsured people forgoing care altogether.

I have an uninsured relative who gets excellent health care in Mexico. Forcing him to purchase US health insurance is pointless and immoral. No one should be required to hand over money to those corrupt organizations.

[napi21]

14. Good for your relative. Go to Mexico for yur HC if yu can.

Very few prople can. And it IS mostly the insured who pay for the uninsured's HC. That's true, but don't you realize that when the # of people who visit the ER is reduced, that takes the $$ burden away from the overall cost of HC and thus reduces the burden to the ins. co's? There's a section in the new HC bill that forces the ins co's to demonstrate WHY they think they n an increase in premiums and that will help stop reducing the actual HC costs from simply going completely to the paycheck's of the HC Ins. execs.

[jancantor]

15. Even if one supports this "reform" as a policy matter, one could still support

the constitutional vetting of it, since it is not exactly a clear area of law. Iow, vetting it is a good thing. If it holds up, the argument that it's unconstitutional will have been addressed.

Whether or not it is constitutional is in no way related to whether it's good policy.

[Better Believe It]

6. Congress has to vote the funds for that "assistance" when the politicians want to "cut deficits".

Not much in the way of funding will be found to help lower salary workers and none will be found to help us pay for decent coverage. So under the forced private insurance mandate many millions will only get the bare bones coverage with impossibled co-pays and deductables.

[napi21]

8. Almost all of what you said is supposition. I still think the current

new law is thebest first step.

[Better Believe It]

10. It's a realistic and the most likely perspective. The ruling rich are being very clear on this.

Pay attention to their statements and actions.

Their intentions are clear.

It's hardly a big secret.

Do you really think they will vote hundreds of billions of dollars in new federal spending for what they see as a new health care "entitlement" program?

[mvd]

12. Single payer is the way to go

I have my doubts about the health law giving enough AFFORDABLE coverage. Any mandate IMO really has to come with a public option or single payer, or the implementation is flawed. napi21 is right that laid off workers are a concern, but there are ways to address that:

http://www.phimg.org/V2/index.php?option=com_content&view=category&layout=blog&id=54&Itemid=77

That said, we must stop repeal because the Repukes will only add something worse. Expand, not repeal.

[Johonny]

9. the mandate without a public option

many feel leaves people with no choice but buy for profit health insurance that doesn't have their health on their minds, or books. A public option everyone can opt into funding or a more regulated no-profit health insurance industry is more palatable. It also might actually be interested in your best health.

[napi21]

11. I'm not going to use the usual response, but we will not see a public

option for many years, if ever. We need to work with what we have NOW. to eiminate the mandate would simply entice people to NT get insurance and continue to rely on the current mandate that all ER's treat anyone who shows up. Of course that continues to add exhorbitant & unnecessary costs to American health care. if you've ever been to an ER you know they do every imaginable test to make sure they haven't missed anything...even for something incidental like an ear ache, bad cold, etc.