Reuters reported, "The U.S. Appeals Court for the 11th Circuit, based in Atlanta, ruled 2 to 1 that Congress exceeded its authority by requiring Americans to buy coverage, but it unanimously reversed a lower court decision that threw out the entire law."
Do you hear angels singing, too?
Of course, it ain't over until the fate of the Supreme Court sings a similar judgment. It is upon their voice that the legality of individual mandate ultimately hinges and will be placed upon the already burdened backs of Americans in 2014. And the Supreme Court's ruling could possibly be handed down a few months before the November 2012 presidential election.
The White House wasted no time in denouncing Friday's federal court ruling that the individual mandate of Obamacare is unconstitutional: "We strongly disagree with this decision and we are confident it will not stand."
The White House loves to cite how a few other courts have upheld Obama's health-care law. But last week's ruling is the first that a Democrat-appointed judge has ruled against a critical aspect of Obamacare.
The president knows everything rides on the perpetuity of Obamacare's individual mandate. Without it, the entire law collapses. So Obama adviser Stephanie Cutter reiterated in the White House response the administration's same weak defense and rhetoric in hope of sparing what the president calls "individual responsibility provision."
First, she wrote, "The Congressional Budget Office [CBO] estimated that only 1 percent of all Americans would pay a penalty for not having health insurance in 2016."
But how can the government-instituted CBO project the amount of Americans who in some way will renege on Obamacare in the year 2016? (After all, it's not like the feds stand on a credible record of predicting economic trends lately!) If citizens can't afford to buy medical insurance in 2016, what makes the feds think they can afford to pay a penalty for not having it? What are the feds going to do then: throw the economically downtrodden in jail? Who is going to pay for the incarceration of one percent of society or roughly 3.5 million potential new inmates?
Though the CBO says only 1 percent will pay penalties, you can rest assured that 100 percent will pay for this mammoth health-care reform law one way or another via taxes and trickle-down costs for things like employer mandates, Medicaid expansions, tax credits for uninsured, funding grants for states, additional government administration and IRS personnel, etc.
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In June, the non-profit Employment Policies Institute, or EPI, released new research from economists at Cornell University and Indiana University that not only exposes the bias of the CBO but also posits that Obamacare has been grossly underestimated and will result in "much higher costs for taxpayers" than the CBO has estimated.
Friday's White House blog rebutting the appellate court's decision also alleged, "Without the individual responsibility provision, people could wait until they're sick or injured to apply for coverage since insurance companies could no longer say no or charge more. That would lead to double digit premiums increases – up to 20 percent – for everyone in the individual insurance market."
Wrong again.
Just last week, Forbes reported on the annual projections from the Office of the Actuary in the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Forbes' article is titled, "Obamacare will triple the growth rate of net insurance costs." It says, in 2014, "the actuaries find that growth in the net cost of health insurance will increase by nearly 14 percent, compared to 3.5 percent if PPACA had never passed. The growth rate of private insurance costs will rise to 9.4 percent, from 5.0 percent under prior law: an 88 percent increase."
Why is it that any time the feds talk dollars and financial projections, they are in diametric opposition to the experts?
I don't care how the Obama administration bends the Commerce Clause of the U.S. Constitution, Obamacare is unconstitutional and going to run U.S. commerce further into the ground. Any junior certified public accountant knows the last thing our flailing government and economy needs is another entitlement! (There's a reason the majority of the states in our union – 26 to be exact – have defied Obamacare's legality and are fighting its enforcement right now.)
One conclusion the White House did get right in its rebuttal to the appellate court's ruling is this: "Today's ruling is one of many decisions on the Affordable Care Act that we will see in the weeks and months ahead."
The feds' constant botching of facts, figures and our future leaves me thinking that too many kids are running our country. And just for them, I'm wrapping up this article with a "kid's poem" that a friend sent me from the Internet. I don't know the exact source, but I know I'd like its author. It is titled, "Dr. Seuss 2011":
I do not like this, Uncle Sam, I do not like his health-care scam.
I do not like these dirty crooks, or how they lie and cook the books.
I do not like when Congress steals, I do not like White House backdoor deals.
I do not like when they kick the financial can, I do not like this "YES WE CAN!"
I do not like their spending sprees. Why can't they get it – nothing's free.
I do not like their smug replies, broken promises and corruption ties,
I do not like this kind of hope. I do not like it – Nope, nope, nope!