Re:Did Insurance Fire Brigades let uninsured buildings burn?
by colechristensen on Monday December 19, 2022 @02:41PM
(#34056635)
I likewise do not approve of the Feds expanding their powers arbitrarily by declaring the punishment for whatever they wouldn’t otherwise be allowed to enforce “a tax”. Calling the insurance mandate constitutional because the punishment was a “tax” was abusing the intent of the law.
Re:Did Insurance Fire Brigades let uninsured buildings burn?
by generj on Monday December 19, 2022 @03:29PM
(#34057220)
If you worried about fines being used to deter activities society doesn’t want, and that fine money being collected as tax revenue, you are at least 200 years too late.
Re:Did Insurance Fire Brigades let uninsured buildings burn?
by yamtaddle on Monday December 19, 2022 @04:09PM
(#34057756)
It's pointless to try to draw a distinction here, because you can re-frame the exact same behavior several different ways, some of which are already common, so it doesn't represent any expansion of power. Like, raise taxes by that much and give people with insurance a credit for it, but not those without insurance. Done. No "worse" than e.g. child tax credits, as far as constitutionality. Insisting that the law do some particular word-dance to get to the exact same place isn't productive and doesn't defend liberty.
Additionally, the whole point of these cases was not simply to get rid of the penalty. The idea was to get rid of the penalty so they could go back to the supreme court and again claim that the mandate is unconstitutional because now there is no "tax" associated with it.
I don't know where things are at now, but it seems unlikely to go anywhere now because it would be difficult to argue that buying insurance is required at all at this point. So we are left with the backup gop strategy of hoping that disarming the mandate will simply bankrupt the program. At least until republican voters wake up and realize that the program is miles better than what we had before.