Obamacare Trumps the First Amendment?
Adam Freedman ·
Sep 11, 2010 at 6:20am
Health Care Czarina Kathleen Sebelius has announced a "zero tolerance" policy against health insurers who make the outlandish claim that Obamacare is causing them to raise their premiums.
“Simply stated, we will not stand idly by as insurers blame their premium hikes and increased profits on the requirement that they provide consumers with basic protections,” Sebelius said. She warned that bad actors may be excluded from new health insurance markets that will open in 2014 under the law.
That's it -- criticize the law and you're out of business. Anyone see a problem?
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Aug '10
Re: Obamacare Trumps the First Amendment?
Disgraceful, unconstitutional, un-American. Naked tyranny masking itself as fairness.
Jun '10
Re: Obamacare Trumps the First Amendment?
I guess Sebelius could claim that an insurance company that grossly misleads is infringing on Obama's patented method--stealing Obama Administration trade secrets.
Jul '10
Re: Obamacare Trumps the First Amendment?
Deval Patrick: "It's a free country...I wish it wasn't." Clearly, Sibelius, Obama et al., feel the same. One can only hope that the insurance companies' head honchos are not as craven as the GM management which allowed Obama to take over the company and abrogate corporate and contract laws.
May '10
Re: Obamacare Trumps the First Amendment?
The "increased profits" part was predictable. We knew before Obamacare was passed that Democrats would blame insurance companies when the premiums went up. Democratic votes increasingly rely on demonization, which is perhaps why it is increasingly rare for citizens of the Left and Right to have calm and rational debates with each other.
FDR's government sent small business owners to jail for charging prices that were too low. So it's certainly possible for government to drive businesses out of operation directly. But my understanding is that FDR did that through Congress. If the executive branch can now shut down businesses on its own, that's even more disturbing.
Aug '10
Re: Obamacare Trumps the First Amendment?
"Yes," in response to your appreciated, final and rhetorical question regarding Kathleen Sebelius’s threat of zero tolerance towards free speech, opinion and the free market. Kathleen Sebelius, as I am sure Ricochet readers know, is another champion of abortion masquerading as a Catholic. Funny how once one is willing to kill infants, malice toward insurance companies is an easy step. Not that a special talent for prognosticating was required to generally foresee the outworking of policies from this administration. Such “long” vision does require courageous, properly filtered, perception unclouded by the 24/7 flow of highly selected information, the distractions of excessive idle entertainment and sports, and the perturbations of approved opinion. What I find more interesting is how many folks who, especially those who want to be thought of as conservative, recoil when other obviously threatening things are pointed out: illegal invasion of the southern border; koranic hegemony; "gay" marriage; feminist destruction of the family and nation; contraceptive, maculinist destruction of the family and nation; affirmative action, etc. Those who annunciate with the same clarity from the same general habits of discernment are sharply ridiculed for that worst offense of all: "not being cool." [1/3]
Edited on Sep 11, 2010 at 8:20amAug '10
Re: Obamacare Trumps the First Amendment?
In Florida we have a pastor of a small flock of congregants that chose to express his alarm over a clear pattern of Islamic invasion by burning a book that he neither regards as sacred nor good. I would say--given that admissible viewpoint, regardless of our agreement—he is acting in a completely honorable and consistent way with his beliefs in provocatively burning a koran. Truth is not about tolerating what some other person thinks in order to gain praise for being "nice" or to avoid conflict. [2/3]
Edited on Sep 11, 2010 at 8:14amAug '10
Re: Obamacare Trumps the First Amendment?
Neither niceness nor tolerance are unqualified virtues. We are to love our enemies, and that may require decidedly everything but niceness and tolerance of their erroneous or evil ideas, behaviors and wills. Expressed as a gesture, it may mean burning a magazine, charm, idol or even a book that one views as doing grievous harm to the souls of others. One must have the capacity to recognize the spiritual aspects of this situation that extend beyond merely material, temporal and political to and fro. If you cannot, your participation in the conversation will be constricted. Believing that there is Truth is critical along with the capacity for receiving and defending it. Because we will disagree in the details, living peacefully with each other requires a protected open forum. That forum is what the founders hoped, in part, to protect. It is where the secular procedure, what I called the "Civil Fiction" elsewhere on Ricochet, can occur. Sending Federal marshals as Pat Buchanan distressingly advocated is a sure threat to American freedoms. The droning, unimaginative and uninspired denunciation, from the Right, of this koran-burning pastor strikes me as disgraceful and silly--but it is permissible! [3/3]
Edited on Sep 11, 2010 at 8:37amMay '10
Re: Obamacare Trumps the First Amendment?
Is it too early to use the term, "jack-booted thugs"?
Aug '10
Re: Obamacare Trumps the First Amendment?
That's well put. There is a wonderful Theodore Dalrymple quote expressing something similar -- that many of the most deeply held beliefs today are a shallowly-adopted mixture of fashion sense and... something else. Can't remember, exactly...
Still, I respectfully disagree about the book-burning. I hesitate to use the word un-American, which has been used so effectively in the past by the likes of Wilson and FDR for anyone who went against their schemes, but I do feel that, while the right to burn books is very American, book-burning itself is un-American.
Today, information is plentiful, and burning one copy of a book won't obliterate the knowledge contained therein. But it wasn't long ago when books were much scarcer, and burning their bodies meant covering up what the books had to say. Also, totalitarian regimes typically make a habit of book-burning, so I still feel that book-burning is a totalitarian symbol.
Far more effective and American a protest to my mind would have been to publicly read the nasty bits of the Quran over loudspeaker to expose rather than silence.
Jul '10
Re: Obamacare Trumps the First Amendment?
Stop worrying...
Once we're all re-educated we'll be in total agreement with her.
Just ask Winston Smith.
Aug '10
Re: Obamacare Trumps the First Amendment?
Adam Freedman: Health Care Czarina Kathleen Sebelius has announced a "zero tolerance" policy against health insurers who make the outlandish claim that Obamacare is causing them to raise their premiums.
...She warned that bad actors may be excluded from new health insurance markets that will open in 2014 under the law.
That's it -- criticize the law and you're out of business. Anyone see a problem? ·
They can't possibly get away with this, can they?
After all, to me complaining about how a new law will cause your prices to skyrocket ought to fall in the extremely protected category of political speech (since even in American law, some forms of speech are more protected than others).
On the other hand, I suppose the administration could take the view that this is commercial, not political speech, and commercial speech has less latitude. Could they get away with this?
I know Sebelius says "bad actors may be excluded from new health insurance markets that will open in 2014 under the law", but what, specifically, in the law gives it the power to exclude "bad actors"? We need to know what we're up against!
Aug '10
Re: Obamacare Trumps the First Amendment?
Midget Faded Rattlesnake
They can't possibly get away with this, can they? ... Could they get away with this? I know Sebelius says "bad actors may be excluded from new health insurance markets that will open in 2014 under the law", but what, specifically, in the law gives it the power to exclude "bad actors"? We need to know what we're up against! · Sep 11 at 9:33am
MFR, they'll make the law up as they go. This is easily done when the Constitution is regarded so little, and those who do regard it are considered "nut jobs" or worse: criminals.
Aug '10
Re: Obamacare Trumps the First Amendment?
Midget Faded Rattlesnake
Still, I respectfully disagree about the book-burning. ... I do feel that, while the right to burn books is very American, book-burning itself is un-American. Today, information is plentiful, and burning...a book won't obliterate the knowledge contained therein. ... book-burning is a totalitarian symbol.
Far more effective and American a protest to my mind would have been to publicly read the nasty bits of the Quran over loudspeaker to expose rather than silence. · Sep 11 at 9:21am
Thanks, I like that the reference to "mixture of fashion sense." Regarding whether book burning is un-American or not, I am concerned that your objection is based, uncharacteristically for you I think, on unclarified emotional associations. It is as though you have elevated, "Totalitarians burn books," to a truism beyond reproach. That Stalin rode in an automobile will not stop me from driving a car. The pastor's symbolism seems like one more, perfectly fine, expression in the cultural "dialogue." I like the idea. By all means let's all talk and let's get down to discussing reciprocity between Islamic and Christian nations. How is that cathedral coming in Mecca?
Aug '10
Re: Obamacare Trumps the First Amendment?
Sorry Adam, we got off-thread and I believe I was the instigator of that. But, it is difficult on a 9/11 anniversary, when you have opened the topic of the First Amendment and we are all wrestling with the issue of a possible koran-burning gesture this very day, for the discussion of free speech to not be pulled into the gravitational field of that latter topic. No, not difficult, impossible. It really is all one cloth of a topic of American self-definition and genuine freedom--and it is being rapidly unwoven by forces within and without. The Left has shackled itself to us and is bent on committing suicide, while many others eagerly await, and work towards, that end.
Edited on Sep 11, 2010 at 11:44amAug '10
Re: Obamacare Trumps the First Amendment?
David Schmitt
...I am concerned that your objection is based, uncharacteristically for you I think, on unclarified emotional associations.
I think you're right that for me, the taboo against book-burning is a deep-seated emotional prejudice that I can illustrate, but not justify.
For example, I've been invited to end-of-term bonfires, where students burn their most hated textbooks. I've had some textbooks so execrable that I felt they did violence to their subject, and I would have gotten great emotional satisfaction from feeding their pages to the flames. But I never even went to one of these bonfires. I just felt... danger... down that path.
Perhaps the symbolic power of undoing others' words through book-burning struck me as too great a temptation, too much like arrogating to myself control over what should and should not be said, rather than leaving others free to speak.
I think many of us have fleeting moments where we feel as Deval Patrick:
However, we know the danger of indulging these fleeting feelings. Sebelius et al apparently don't. AND they have power.
Shiver.
Sep '10
Re: Obamacare Trumps the First Amendment?
This is just the tip of the iceberg.
Under Obamacare, as an ordinary citizen, you will be denied all medical care if you are a registered Republican or a member of the Tea Party or perceived in any way as being an Enemy of the Progressive State. I absolutely guarantee you that Obamacare will be doled out very selectively, in a politically correct way.
The Nightmare is just beginning...
Edited on Sep 11, 2010 at 12:30pmJun '10
Re: Obamacare Trumps the First Amendment?
Midget Faded Rattlesnake
...Still, I respectfully disagree about the book-burning. ... I do feel that, while the right to burn books is very American, book-burning itself is un-American....
...Far more effective and American a protest to my mind would have been to publicly read the nasty bits of the Quran over loudspeaker to expose rather than silence. · Sep 11 at 9:21am
MFR your whole contribution to this conversation (and many others) is insightful and beautifully written
Edited on Sep 11, 2010 at 12:54pmMay '10
Re: Obamacare Trumps the First Amendment?
I expect that this would fail the rational basis test of state action as being against public policy.
Aug '10
Re: Obamacare Trumps the First Amendment?
Pilgrim
MFR your whole contribution to this conversation (and many others) is insightful and beautifully written · Sep 11 at 12:35pm
Edited on Sep 11 at 12:54 pm
Gee. Thanks Pilgrim. (BLUSH.)
Jul '10
Re: Obamacare Trumps the First Amendment?
I think it is a truism, and an emotional reaction, but it's hardly irrational. Riding in a car is generally not a political statement (unless it's a Prius, I guess), book-burning generally is. Political leaders of all stripes have ridden in cars; only a smaller, nastier sub-set of them have encouraged book burnings.
I think a lot of people who value ideas and the written word are uncomfortable with book-burning because it represents a violent, forceful refusal to engage with ideas you don't like. There is a definite whiff of thuggishness about it.