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Harris Sherline: Where Are the Lawyers on Health Care?
Is the health-care reform constitutional? How about taking over General Motors and Chrysler, insurance giant AIG, the banks or any of the other myriad actions taken by President Barack Obama, his administration and Congress since he became president?
The number of lawyers in Congress varies over time, but in general it’s a high percentage of the membership, ranging from 55 percent to 80 percent of the House and about 60 percent of the Senate. That translates into 60 senators and 250-plus representatives, for a total of more than 300.
With all the lawyers in Congress, one wonders how it is that they manage to pass legislation that violates the U.S. Constitution. Or could that possibly be the reason? That is, since they’re attorneys, they believe they can ignore the Constitution with impunity.
Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah; former Ohio Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell; and Kenneth Klukowsi, a fellow and senior legal analyst with the American Civil Rights Union, made the case in a Wall Street Journal editorial that the health-care bills working their way through Congress are unconstitutional for the following reasons:
» “First, the Constitution does not give Congress the power to require that Americans purchase health insurance. Congress must be able to point to at least one of its powers listed in the Constitution as the basis of any legislation it passes. None of those powers justifies the individual insurance mandate.”
» “A second constitutional defect of the (Harry) Reid bill passed in the Senate involves the deals he cut to secure the votes of individual senators.”
» “A third constitutional defect in this ObamaCare legislation is its command that states establish such things as benefit exchanges, which will require state legislation and regulations.”
According to the Congressional Budget Office, “A mandate requiring all individuals to purchase health insurance would be an unprecedented form of federal action. The government has never required people to buy any good or service as a condition of lawful residence in the United States.”
Steve Elliott, president of the Grassfire.org Alliance, noted: “Never before in U.S. history has such a federal mandate been imposed on the people of the United States! Why? Because the individual mandate is unconstitutional.”
Michael Connelly, a retired constitutional attorney, observed: “The law does provide for rationing of health care, particularly where senior citizens and other classes of citizens are involved, free health care for illegal immigrants ...”
Connelly also said: “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. ... This legislation also provides for access, by the appointees of the Obama administration, of all of your personal health-care information (a direct violation of the specific provisions of the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution), your personal financial information, and the information of your employer, physician and hospital. ... The Fourth is supposed to be a protection 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 Third and Fourth Amendments may provide.”
As the health-care legislation is proposed, Connelly further notes: “If you decide not to have health-care 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 Fifth 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.”
Finally, led by South Carolina Attorney General Henry McMaster, the attorneys general of at least 10 states are already lining up to contest the health-care bill on constitutional grounds. Questioning the permanent exemption granted to Nebraska to pay for an expansion of Medicaid, McMaster asks, “Why is it that Nebraska pays no taxes, pays no money as a state while the other 49 states do?”
So, with such a high percentage of attorneys in Congress, how is it that they can create and adopt legislation that is so clearly unconstitutional? Do they actually believe that no one will challenge the health-care bill in federal court? Or is the legislation merely a tactical maneuver in a larger strategic plan to get health care passed in any form, lock it in then continue to modify it over future years — a la Social Security and Medicare?
— Harris R. Sherline is a retired CPA and former chairman and CEO of Santa Ynez Valley Hospital who has lived in Santa Barbara County for more than 30 years. He stays active writing opinion columns and his blog, Opinionfest.com.
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» on 01.17.10 @ 10:22 AM
The number of lawyers in congress as listed on this Ron Paul site is 216. 54 in the Senate, 162 in the House. http://www.dailypaul.com/node/94514
The Harris count of 300 must be a bumper year or perhaps just a gain in translation.
Harris could save a lot of time by just linking us to the WSJ editorial otherwise a good cut and paste job.
Further information on constitutional law can be obtained by taking one of Michael Connelly online law classes at ed2go. The world of knowledge at our finger tips.
» on 01.18.10 @ 09:10 AM
Of course Harris Sherline hates anything that tends to reduce profits for his former employer, Cottage Health. Cottage Health gouges and inflates its prices to make obscene profits, and financially devastates thousands of regular people… see
http://www.independent.com/news/2010/jan/06/all-marked/
3,000 percent markups are common for Cottage’s monopolistic $52 million/year profits. Harris Sherline loves anything that gets he and Cottage money like that, and they both delight in driving sick people into bankruptcy.
» on 01.18.10 @ 11:50 AM
Tort reform now—The liberals are paid off by the trial lawyers & unions—Sad for the U.S-taxpayer..
» on 01.18.10 @ 01:32 PM
Jeeze small P you are like a damned junk yard dog, pissing on everything you sniff to mark your territory.
We get it, you want socialist healthcare. We get it, you think it can be funded by the wealthy. We get it, you think everything Europe does is peachy and everything America does is stupid. We get it, that you have no mind of your own and no desire to live free. You want a big nanny state because you miss your mommy and life is scary on your own.
There is a big difference between screwing a company because it’s run by greedy selfish idiots and screwing an economic system for the same reason. If you have trouble with how Cottage runs their business, then go after those running it. But to impugn an economy because of a few greedy individuals is about as short sighted and stupid as you can get.
The money that insurance companies collect in premiums is invested back into our economy. They don’t sit on piles of cash you blithering nit wit. So if you take that money for some other purpose, like covering illegal aliens, then that is money not being invested in the economy? So what, genius, is the effect on the economy as a whole? Ah, gee AN50, I dunno.
Please get off this European healthcare craze will ya? Those idiots are bankrupting their economies over this crap and they still don’t pay for their own defense. Healthcare is a service and depends on a robust and growing economic pie to work well. Without wealth generation to pay for it healthcare in any form becomes an economic cancer that will snuff out its host in time.
» on 01.18.10 @ 03:19 PM
GREAT article re this on EPMONTHLY.COM by Dr. Coburn, one of only two senators who is a physician… This is a lawyer and lobbyist run health care reform bill, tell me, are you feeling better now?
To the USA - don’t be so NAIVE as to think they’re in this for you!
» on 01.18.10 @ 04:28 PM
That’s right Foster I hide. Obviously you don’t have much reading comprehension, so most of your rebuttal is nonsense. Wanna try again? How is a government providing service socialism? Or for that matter do you know what the word means? And don’t give me all that crap about “gradients”. You liberals and your infatuation with “nuance”, it’s just a nauseating cover for “I don’t get it”.
Socialism is government control of the means of production and distribution, one step down from complete government ownership of the economy (communism). Capitalism (private ownership of production and distribution) has many shades already. It can operate in a free market or a controlled market (usually fascist) or somewhere in between. Not much absolutism there, huh?
Know your stuff Ricky, look past my constant ranting and engage the questions. Yes I hide my ID on the net and no I don’t care what you think of it. I know who you are, where you live and believe me some day we will meet, face to face, mano y mano. I might even buy you a beer down there at the local dive. Once you get to know me you will realize I’m every bit the insufferable A**hole in person you have come to know me by here.
» on 01.19.10 @ 09:26 AM
AN50, so great to hear you support bankrupting sick folks with a 3000 percent markup on antibiotics…
http://www.independent.com/news/2010/jan/06/all-marked/
Gotta pay those top executives like Harris Sherline the big bucks, so they can come up with schemes like that one to bankrupt regular folks.
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