By Michael Connelly
The first article I wrote and posted on this blog was in August 2009 and it was titled “The Truth About the Health Care Bills.” It was based on my reading of the original 1100 pages of H.R. 3299 that was the first of the proposed bills. Based on what I read in that bill and other proposals I made a number of predictions about what would happen if the bill passed. I was immediately viscously attacked by those on the left who believe freedom of speech is only allowed if you agree with them.
I received death threats, was called every name in the book, and people claimed that I was lying about being an attorney and a Constitutional Law Instructor. The group “Media Matters” funded by George Soros went berserk as did some other left wing so called “fact check” groups that never really disputed the facts I presented, but challenged my opinions.
In any case, the law that finally passed was 2700 pages long and in most respects is worse than the original. It is now being enforced and the horror is unfolding. I have therefore reposted by original article below and made comments in bold black to illustrate how, unfortunately, most of the things I predicted are now reality.
THE TRUTH ABOUT THE HEALTHCARE BILLS
Well, I have done it! I have read the entire text of proposed House Bill 3200: The Affordable Health Care Choices Act of 2009. I studied it with particular emphasis from my area of expertise, constitutional law. I was frankly concerned that parts of the proposed law that were being discussed might be unconstitutional. What I found was far worse than what I had heard or expected.
To begin with, much of what has been said about the law and its implications is in fact true, despite what the Democrats and the media are saying. The law does provide for rationing of health care, particularly where senior citizens and other classes of citizens are involved,(Various panels made up of bureaucrats appointed by the Obama administration will decide health care expenditures under Medicare, and decide what patients will receive specific types of care. They will also choose the doctors and hospitals that can be used by each patient. This is a direct interference with the doctor patient relationship and is clearly rationing.)free health care for illegal immigrants, (millions of dollars have been appropriated to set up clinics in certain states to provide free medical treatment for immigrants. However, employees of the clinics are prohibited from asking patients about their legal status.) free abortion services, and probably forced participation in abortions by members of the medical profession.(Doctors and nurses are not yet being forced to perform abortions, but religious institutions are being forced to finance free contraception, and abortion inducing morning after pills, despite the fact that this violates their religious beliefs and is a direct violation of the 1st Amendment. The next step will certainly be mandating that Catholic hospitals and others provide full abortion services.)
The Bill will also eventually force private insurance companies out of business and put everyone into a government run system. (Although the so called “public option” was removed from the final version of the health care bill it is still alive and well in the minds of most proponents of the legislation. Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, and the mainstream news media all assured Americans that under Obamacare health care costs and insurance premiums would decline. The exact opposite is true. Health care costs continue to rise and so do insurance premiums. Small businesses can’t afford to provide insurance for their employees and the employees can’t afford it on their own. In addition, insurance companies are being forced to provide benefits that will ultimately force many of them to price themselves out of business.) All decisions about personal health care will ultimately be made by federal bureaucrats and most of them will not be health care professionals. Hospital admissions, payments to physicians, and allocations of necessary medical devices will be strictly controlled. (Under the provisions of Obamacare some 138 new Federal agencies or committees have been established to make many of the decisions on your health care that were previously made by you and your physician. The most heinous of the provisions in the law in this area places a tax on artificial limbs including those being provided to elderly veterans, and our troops that have wounded fighting for our nation in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Veterans Administration will not pay the tax so these heroes and their families will have to pick up the tab. The same is not true for illegal aliens. They can get them at taxpayer expense.)
However, as scary as all of that it, it just scratches the surface. In fact, I have concluded that this legislation really has no intention of providing affordable health care choices. Instead it is a convenient cover for the most massive transfer of power to the Executive Branch of government that has ever occurred, or even been contemplated. If this law or a similar one is adopted, major portions of the Constitution of the United States will effectively have been destroyed.
The first thing to go will be the masterfully crafted balance of power between the Executive, Legislative, and Judicial branches of the U.S. Government. The Congress will be transferring to the Obama Administration authority in a number of different areas over the lives of the American people and the businesses they own. The irony is that the Congress doesn’t have any authority to legislate in most of those areas to begin with. I defy anyone to read the text of the U.S. Constitution and find any authority granted to the members of Congress to regulate health care. (Ironically, the U.S. Supreme Court held that the individual mandate portion of the law passed by Congress was not constitutionally permissible under either the commerce clause or the necessary and proper clause of the Constitution. However, using some bizarre reasoning five Justices found it Constitutional under the taxing power of Congress. They ignored the Constitutional requirement that all tax laws must originate in the House of Representatives, while the final version of Obamacare originated in the Senate. The bottom line is that Congress passed a piece of legislation without reading it and it gave Obama and the Executive Branch the power to make over 4,000 decisions on every aspect of health care without any Congressional approval or oversight.)
This legislation also provides for access by the appointees of the Obama administration to of all of your personal healthcare information, your personal financial information, and the information of your employer, physician, and hospital. (This is all in the process of being implemented under the rules and regulations being adopted as a result of the law.) All of this is a direct violation of the specific provisions of the 4th Amendment to the Constitution protecting against unreasonable searches and seizures. You can also forget about the right to privacy. That will have been legislated into oblivion regardless of what the 3rd and 4th Amendments may provide.
If you decide not to have healthcare insurance or if you have private insurance that is not deemed “acceptable” to the “Health Choices Administrator” appointed by Obama there will be a tax imposed on you. It is called a “tax” instead of a fine because of the intent to avoid application of the due process clause of the 5th Amendment. However, that doesn’t work because since there is nothing in the law that allows you to contest or appeal the imposition of the tax, it is definitely depriving someone of property without the “due process of law. (When this original article was written the penalty for not complying with the original mandate was styled as a tax. Then to quell some of the overwhelming opposition to the proposed law, it became a penalty or a fine. Now the Supreme Court has ruled that it is in fact a tax. I personally don’t care what it is called, or what the five Justices on the Supreme Court say, it is still unconstitutional.)
So, there are three of those pesky amendments that the far left hate so much out the original ten in the Bill of Rights that are effectively nullified by this law. It doesn’t stop there though. The 9th Amendment that provides: “The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people;” The 10th Amendment states: “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are preserved to the States respectively, or to the people.” Under the provisions of this piece of Congressional handiwork neither the people nor the states are going to have any rights or powers at all in many areas that once were theirs to control. (The only victory in the Obamacare court challenge for those who support the Constitution came when the Court ruled that the federal government could not compel the states to put millions of people on the Medicaid rolls without any way to finance it. This was a victory for the 10th Amendment, but what about we the people and our rights under the 9th and 10th Amendments? Apparently those don’t exist any longer.)
I could write many more pages about this legislation, but I think you get the idea. This is not about health care; it is about seizing power and limiting rights. Article 6 of the Constitution requires the members of both houses of Congress to “be bound by oath or affirmation” to support the Constitution. If I was a member of Congress I would not be able to vote for this legislation or anything like it without feeling I was violating that sacred oath or affirmation. If I voted for it anyway I would hope the American people would hold me accountable. (This paragraph is self explanatory and I stand by it.)
For those who might doubt the nature of this threat I suggest they consult the source. Here is a link to the Constitution: www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/constitution_transcript.html
And another to the Bill of Rights: www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/bill_of_rights_transcript.html
There you can see exactly what we are about to have taken from us.
Michael Connelly