The Slaughter Rule is Unconstitutional

[Doc Intrepid]

"So could an insurance company deny coverage based on firearms ownership? That's been hinted at..."

From a lawful firearms owner perspective, this is one of the issues that I find most alarming about the linkage between the Democratic administration's Health Care Reform Bill and the American Medical Association's (AMA) focus on "firearms in society as disease" analogy: the health care reform bill could easily be used to restrict firearms ownership in any number of ways, due to the relationship established by the AMA between "firearms ownership" and "U.S. Health Risks".

Skeptical? Peruse these articles:

"...(Firearms) Violence as a Public Health Problem" (AMA, JAMA 2009) -
http://virtualmentor.ama-assn.org/2009/02/mhst1-0902.html

"Under the Gun: Threat Assessment in Schools" (AMA, JAMA) -
http://virtualmentor.ama-assn.org/2009/02/pfor1-0902.html

"Assault weapons as a public health hazard in the U.S." (AMA, JAMA) -
http://www.faqs.org/abstracts/Healt...ublic-health-hazard-in-the-United-States.html

"Doctors to Ask Patients About Gun Ownership" -
http://www.aapsonline.org/jpands/hacienda/edcor8.html


A successful effort by the U.S. government to establish a relationship with empirical linkages between 'Public Health Care' and 'Firearms Ownership' could conceivably result in increasing efforts to restrict firearms ownership in an attempt to 'make public health care more affordable'.

It's tough to predict the future - but there can be little doubt that the American Medical Association, certain political parties, and special interest groups such as Insurers or the Brady organization could create all sorts of alliances that ultimately cast a chilling effect on unrestricted firearms ownership or activities such as hunting.

FWIW.

YMMV.

 

[ADB]

I think most of the theories being put forward here are more than a little paranoid. Congress has barely gotten up the nerve to stop insurance companies from denying people life-saving healthcare due to pre-existing conditions, and folks here think that they're going to suddenly go off and ban booze, guns, and fried foods? Seriously?

As for higher premiums: Unless you're a moron who manages to injure yourself on a comically frequent basis, your odds of needing healthcare are actually LESS than the average if you spend your recreational time running around the woods with a gun, or skateboarding, or mountain climbing. Insurance companies love people like that, because they're fit, and even if they do get hurt it's cheap stuff like broken bones and cuts. Compare that to somebody whose rec time is on the couch jamming greasy potato chips and soda into their piehole, and who will probably end up with heart disease or diabetes before they're 40.

The fact remains that Canada has a complete public healthcare system, and one that's actually government run as opposed to our mostly private system. Nothing like what's described has happened there.

I don't think this was ever really about healthcare. This is about a power grab and allowing the congress to run unchecked over our civil liberties. We are standing in the doorway of becoming at best a socialist nation and at worst outright communist!!! I fear greatly for the future of our second amendment rights and for the future of our republic.

 

[Glenn E. Meyer]

The public health journals are a major source of literature describing guns as a menance. That would be a basis for rate differentials.

So wouldn't a single payer plan like Medicare for all, take care of that?

Passing anti-gun, butter, egg yolk rules would light up the Congress as the gun lobby and agricultural interests go nuts.

Now, I didn't mean throw that monkey into the wrench. Just a thought.

 

[BlueTrain]

I don't like to be too negative too often but I was also going to point out how some individuals see firearms as a health problem (insert lead poisoning joke here). However, someone already made the point. From an insurance standpoint, if you include old age and survivor's insurance (social security, in other words), then the government ought to encourage unhealthy behavior, just so people wouldn't live so long. Think of the savings in social security. But not everyone agrees what being healthy means.

And not everyone agrees that everyone ought to have medical care, apparently.

 

[Glenn E. Meyer]

then the government ought to encourage unhealthy behavior, just so people wouldn't live so long.

Then you think the government should adopt a Guns and Butter policy. Didn't that get us in trouble?

Sorry - couldn't resist. We have guns and butter in my house. I'm doing my part to avoid the trip on the ice floe (one of the health care options).

 

[HarrySchell]

The fact remains that Canada has a complete public healthcare system, and one that's actually government run as opposed to our mostly private system. Nothing like what's described has happened there.

And the fastest growing segment for healthcare delivery and insurance in Canada is private. People are fleeing the public system by coming here and in their own country.

See also: http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=6378

This describes the court case that overturned a ban on all private care arrangements on the basis that the public system performed so poorly it violated Canadian's civil and human rights, and that an alternative must exist.

Again, while this is a narrow example re healthcare, it demonstrates that government monopolies must have limits, and this conclusion applies to more than healthcare.

 

[Bartholomew Roberts]

I think most of the theories being put forward here are more than a little paranoid. Congress has barely gotten up the nerve to stop insurance companies from denying people life-saving healthcare due to pre-existing conditions, and folks here think that they're going to suddenly go off and ban booze, guns, and fried foods? Seriously?

This is news to me. Since when were insurance companies able to deny healthcare to people? Or did you mean that insurance companies refused to cover costs for healthcare conditions that existed prior to those people buying a policy?

Because one of those I would have a problem with; but the other one strikes me as complaining that the insurance company won't let you buy a new auto policy for the car accident you already had.

 

[MTT TL]

Since when were insurance companies able to deny healthcare to people?

Since always. They have certain standards and of you don't meet them you don't get coverage. Same for auto insurance. You might not have had a crash you want them to pay for but if you have 4 speeding tickets good luck finding any "normal" affordable insurance. Your employer might have a contract that will cover you but not necessarily.

About the rules issue.

The constitution is clear. But this is the same woman who said "you have got to be kidding" when the constitutionality of the bill was questioned. They are not going to let a little thing like the constitution or the will of the people get in the way.

This is not a coup by the legislator either. This is a coup by certain people in the legislature and executive.

 

[ADB]

And the fastest growing segment for healthcare delivery and insurance in Canada is private. People are fleeing the public system by coming here and in their own country.

If they're ultra-wealthy and willing to pay three or four times the price to be catered to, sure. But on objective rankings, Canada's healthcare system scores much higher than ours does.

This is news to me. Since when were insurance companies able to deny healthcare to people? Or did you mean that insurance companies refused to cover costs for healthcare conditions that existed prior to those people buying a policy?

Insurers are also frequently in the habit of redefining what a "pre-existing condition" is, such as claiming that someone's family history of cancer constitutes grounds to deny coverage when that person gets cancer. Or cases where insurers specifically go in and cancel someone's policy for no reason other than the fact that the person's treatment is costing them money. Or they claim (almost always falsely) that the individual who becomes sick somehow violated the terms of the contract, rendering it void, a practice known as "rescission."

"Blue Cross praised employees who dropped sick policyholders, lawmaker says"

http://articles.latimes.com/2009/jun/17/business/fi-rescind17

"They said I never mentioned I had a back problem," said Marrari, 52, whose coverage with Blue Cross was abruptly canceled in 2006 after a thyroid disorder, fluid in the heart and lupus were diagnosed. That left the Los Angeles woman with $25,000 in medical bills and the stigma of the company's claim that she had committed fraud by not listing on a health questionnaire "preexisting conditions" Marrari said she did not know she had.

In the past 18 months, California's five largest insurers paid almost $19 million in fines for marooning policyholders who had fallen ill. That includes a $1 million fine against Health Net, which admitted offering bonuses to employees for finding reasons to cancel policies, according to company documents released in court.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/09/07/AR2009090702455.html

The catch is that these decisions are almost always made right after the person is diagnosed with an expensive illness, and rarely if ever have anything to do with the actual illness, because these companies have set up an automatic system where anyone who's so diagnosed is subjected to an investigation looking for any excuse to cancel the policy.

Previously undisclosed records from Mitchell's case reveal that Fortis had a company policy of targeting policyholders with HIV. A computer program and algorithm targeted every policyholder recently diagnosed with HIV for an automatic fraud investigation, as the company searched for any pretext to revoke their policy. As was the case with Mitchell, their insurance policies often were canceled on erroneous information, the flimsiest of evidence, or for no good reason at all, according to the court documents and interviews with state and federal investigators.

The South Carolina Supreme Court, in upholding the jury's verdict in the case in a unanimous 5-0 opinion, said that it agreed with the lower court's finding that Fortis destroyed records to hide the corporation's misconduct. Supreme Court Chief Justice Jean Hoefer Toal wrote: "The lack of written rescission policies, the lack of information available regarding appealing rights or procedures, the separate policies for rescission documents" as well as the "omission" of other records regarding the decision to revoke Mitchell's insurance, constituted "evidence that Fortis tried to conceal the actions it took in rescinding his policy."

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE62G2DO20100317

This is standard practice for insurance companies.

 

[rantingredneck]

Since always. They have certain standards and of you don't meet them you don't get coverage.

Not to speak for Bart, but I think you're missing his point. Insurance companies can't deny you medical care. They can refuse to pay for care if you don't live up to your side of the contract, but they can't deny you care. There is a difference, though part of the strategy all along has been to blur the line between health care and health insurance.

 

[HarrySchell]

This is standard practice for insurance companies.

And you think the feds or state government will fess up to malfeasance more honestly?

Comment deals with insurance companies, but government has no better a track record, and if granted a monopoly, will be even less responsive. Medicare already has a higher claim rejection rate than private insurance.

My daughter was complaining about her insurance, which is just a catastrophic plan, and how she changed to one that was slightly less restrictive and cost less. Still dissatisfied. So I said, "it sounds like you got a less bad deal and are paying less for it. How would that happen if there was a government monopoly?" She isn't fully against Obamacare, but is now thinking hard about personal freedoms at risk due to more government intervention everywhere.

 

[MTT TL]

For giggles go ahead and google "doctors drop medicare". You should get about 1 googleplex in articles about doctors who have dropped it.

 

[Mike Irwin]

My former sister-in-law fled Canada's "health care" system because it would have taken several months to get her in for an MRI that would have diagnosed her debilitating neck pain.

She came across the border to Buffalo and had an MRI that day.

She would have waited even longer for the surgery to correct the disk issue that was causing the debilitating pain.

She had it two days later in Buffalo.

 

[Al Norris]

Ahem.... Getting back to the actual topic (y'all do remember what that was? Hmmm?)

A self-enacting rule, by and of itself is not inherently unconstitutional. Consider:

In the House, we have Bill A, which is a very unpopular bill, but has passed the Senate. It is also a bill that some members (of the House) see as essential to the country. We also have Bill B, which is hugely popular, in the House. The leadership of the House knows that Bill A may not pass a straight up-down vote. So....

The rules committee (Composed of a majority of the current party of majority) proposes the self-enacting rule that will include both Bill A and Bill B. The rule states that should the House agree upon the rule, both bills will be deemed as passed.

Some members will vote "yes" in order to get Bill A passed (as enacted in the Senate), and other members will vote "yes" to to get Bill B passed.

The measure carries and Bill A is sent to the President, while Bill B is sent to the Senate.

The individual representatives can therefore go back to their constituency and make the claim that in order to get Bill "X" passed (whichever their constituency likes), they had to make a compromise. Plausible and such compromise is politics at its core.

No real problem. In fact this is what has happened in the past.

In the present case, we have the Healthcare bill (Bill A) that the Senate passed and we have a reconciliation bill (Bill B) that the House has devised to get rid of things they didn't like in the Senate version. And we have the self-enacting rule.

Should the rule be approved by the House, then the Healthcare bill will have been deemed to have passed. Um, so will the reconciliation bill. The Healthcare bill will be forwarded to the President who is just waiting to sign it into law. Meanwhile, the reconciliation bill will be sent to the Senate who may or may not pass it as sent.

For the sake of the argument, let's say the Senate passes the reconciliation bill as worded. That gets sent to the President (who will most likely sign it) and the newly created law will have been immediately amended (as I understand Senate rules, this bill could come to a vote with as little as 20 hours of debate).

What makes this particular "Slaughter Rule" different than those self-enacting rules of the past?

By voting for the rule ("yes"), the members will have voted 1) to agree with and to pass the Senate Healthcare bill, and 2) to disagree with the Healthcare bill, because they are also voting for passage of the reconciliation bill. This is a self-contradictory vote.

This is the logical conundrum that I see. It's entirely possible that the SCOTUS will see this in the same manner.

 

[RDak]

Interesting discussion.

Code of conduct rules prevent me from giving my honest opinion of what is going on in the halls of congress right now though.

ETA: Let me just say that I agree wholeheartedly with what Al said:

By voting for the rule ("yes"), the members will have voted 1) to agree with and to pass the Senate Healthcare bill, and 2) to disagree with the Healthcare bill, because they are also voting for passage of the reconciliation bill. This is a self-contradictory vote.

And why are they doing this(?).........whoops..........code of conduct prevents me from presenting my true feelings on this issue.

Sorry for the rant, carry on guys.

 

[ganai]

By voting for the rule ("yes"), the members will have voted 1) to agree with and to pass the Senate Healthcare bill, and 2) to disagree with the Healthcare bill, because they are also voting for passage of the reconciliation bill. This is a self-contradictory vote.

I think the bolded parts are relevant, the italic, while probably accurate, is not relevant.
Specifically, if you vote for something, whether you 'agree' with it is really beside the point, and, somewhat meaningless.
Either its constitutional to tie two bills together in one vote, or it isn't. I don't see how the contents of the bills change that fact.
Say a rule ties together a bill for a tax cut, and a bill that rescinds that tax cut. The end result is no change in law, its just political games, but is it unconstitutional?

So, the House members will be voting yes or no on the senate bill (with its abortion language, which I understand is the sticking point for many), and the 'reconciliation' bill, which may or may not get passed in the senate. So they can say 'no, it wasn't my intention to pass that abortion language - the senate dropped the ball on that'.
Anyone who buys that line is a fool, but as the saying goes, people get the government they deserve.

 

[Al Norris]

Ganai, the entire post, was just my opinion. Whether that opinion is accurate and/or holds any weight, is yet to be seen.

I would posit that a vote for any particular legislation, is in fact, a vote to agree with (the merits of) that legislation.

The Courts may or may not agree that this is irrelevant. That is still to be determined. For the average voting American however, it is entirely relevant.

As I outlined, and as Mike Irwin has shown, back in post #14, this type of procedure has occurred in the past.

However, the one overriding difference is that in the past, such a procedural move never encompassed legislation that will effect every single person living within the United States. Nor has any prior procedural move encompassed legislation that attempts to give the federal government control over one-sixth of the entire GDP of the nation.

This is sweeping legislation and in such matters, it is absolutely necessary that each and every member of Congress should be held accountable for their vote.

The Constitution is very clear on maintaining democratic accountability. That is why we have Art. 1.7.2 and 1.7.3. The procedural ruse that the House is attempting, defeats that clear accountability.

Should this attempt be held Constitutional, then any time hereinafter that either House wishes to pass legislation that they know would never stand in an up-down vote, may be bypassed by similar machinations.

We then become a country ruled by congressional fiat, where no Representative or Senator is ever accountable to the people.

 

[musher]

I did read the link Mike provided, and what I see is that this procedure has been used to incorporate amendments to bills before the house w/o having house members actually vote on the amendments.

What's not clear to me is that the procedure has been used to pass a bill OUT of the house (either for signature or to the senate). The examples given in the white paper do not mention whether or not the bills so amended were later presented to the house for a final vote.

I would argue that the first type of activity (amending bills before the house) falls squarely within the House's authority to set it's own rules for moving legislation forward.

To use this procedure to pass a bill out of the house without having actually been voted on seems to run afoul of the constitutionally defined process for approving legislation that is submitted to the president or senate.

 

[ganai]

Should this attempt be held Constitutional, then any time hereinafter that either House wishes to pass legislation that they know would never stand in an up-down vote, may be bypassed by similar machinations.

We then become a country ruled by congressional fiat, where no Representative or Senator is ever accountable to the people.

from Article 1 Section 7:

But in all such Cases the Votes of both Houses shall be determined by Yeas and Nays, and the Names of the Persons voting for and against the Bill shall be entered on the Journal of each House respectively.

If the vote for this rule does get yeas and nays, and the names casting those votes are recorded and available to the public, it seems to be in compliance with the constitution. We the people will still know who voted for it, and who didn't, and can ourselves vote them out based on that info.
Personally, I'd be happy to see this mechanism (self-enacting rule) killed, but it seems that if it was open to serious constitutional challenge, we'd have seen that challenge before now.

 

[HarrySchell]

The cat is amongst the pidgeons now...the House has voted 222-202 "to approve the Slaughter Rule". Breaking news, I am not sure what this really means, but 28 Dems voted with Reps against the measure, with half a dozen or so not there to vote, Dems and Reps.

I guess if Pelosi loses the actual vote on the Senate bill...if they actually have one...then she turns around and deems it passed?

I suspect tempers are going to fray a bit.

Why is this happening?