[ExI] health care again, was: RE: Why Cities Keep Growing, Corporations and People Always Die, and Life Gets Faster

[spike]

>... On Behalf Of Damien Sullivan
....
> 
>> It is a critical issue here because the fed has no way of determining how
much you own.  They don't have means tests for this purpose...

>...Uhhh... you only qualify for Medicaid if your assets, minus one home and
car, are under $2000.  (Some states are more generous.)  That's a
property-based means test done by the Fed.  Well, maybe done by the states
under federal requirement... 

The huge difference is the states have means testing.  The federal tax
return has no blank on there for how much you own.  The federal government
has no legitimate means of knowing how much money you own.  That is why
Medicaid must go through states.  It is equivalent to a welfare program
which also must go through state governments.  The health care reform act
doesn't go through state governments, but comes directly from the federal
government.

>...but I don't see a huge difference... -xx- Damien X-)

Huge critically important difference.  If ObamaCare stands the SCOTUS test,
we have gained health care for the poor at the expense of losing the second
American Revolution without firing a shot.  We have set aside the
constitutional restraints on the federal government.  Then we have no more
freedom, but rather we live or die at the whim of the government.

Regarding the alternative, one proposal was to have the fed mandate that
every state set up some kind of state-administered version of ObamaCare.
Looks to me like that would at least be legal.  It would require the fed to
fight about 30 states over 11th amendment rights.  It might cause sick
people to flood into the richest states.  It would set up a fifty-way
competition among the states, which would cause them to individually
optimize their statewide medical systems.  

Now that I think about it, I wouldn't be surprised if the US eventually
decides to go that route: the fed mandates each state have some form of
government sponsored health care subsidy.

spike