Mood:  smelly

For my first post here in over a year, I make the following prediction regarding the Supreme Court's upcoming decision on the Obama health care law:  The Court will find that it lacks jurisdiction of the case at this time.  A bare majority will believe it is unconstitutional. But enough of these will also believe that it (or, at least, the tax penalty provision of it) is a "tax" that, when joined with the supporters of the law who also believe it is a "tax," the only strict holding a majority of the court will reach will be that the tax injunction act deprives the Court of juridsiction to decide the case.  (Recall that I said two years ago that the real constitutional problem with the law is that it imposes a tax payable to private corporations at a rate set by those corporations, rather than by Congress.) That will leave us going into the election with a health care law, and health care system, that is presumed to be unconstitutional, but is still on the books until the first time the IRS tries to impose the tax penalty to enforce the individual mandate (at which time the unfortunate taxpayer may sue for a refund and get the law invalidated). The fist time the Court will actually have jurusdiction to reach the constitutionality of the law is 2014.

Posted by ian_j_site2 at 11:58 PM EDT

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Success!  Kansas voters overwhelmingly approved Constitutional Amendment Question No. 2 yesterday!

Mental illness is no longer equated with crime in the state constitution! 

Posted by ian_j_site2 at 8:21 PM EDT

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Article 5, section 2 of the Kansas Constitution now reads:

Disqualification to vote. The legislature may, by law, exclude persons from voting because of mental illness or commitment to a jail or penal institution. No person convicted of a felony under the laws of any state or of the United States, unless pardoned or restored to his civil rights, shall be qualified to vote.

The state constitution thus  obviously authorizes the state legislature to disenfranchise anyone who is being treated for any mental illness diagnosed by a properly licensed medical provider--even common depression or "religious psychosis" (a daignosis some would apply to anyone who is serious about religion).  But just as disturbing is the fact that this constitutional provision also includes all mental illnesses in the same class as crimes.  That is, it treats all mental illnesses as ongoing crimes, punishable, should the legislature so choose, by the loss of the right to vote.

 The mischief that might be possible under the current langauge  in only a slightly more toxic political climate is also noteworthy. The same legislature that could deny  psychiatric patients the vote because they are diagnosed (for legitimate therapeutic reasons) with schizophrenia or common depression could also deny the vote to citizens who are diagnosed by properly-qualified medical personnel for political reasons with such contrived maladies as "religious psychosis," "pathological socialist thought disorder" (remember the McCarthy era?) or "homosexual behavior disorder." I consider leaving this invitation in the state constitution dangerous.

 However, Constitutional Amendment Question No. 2 will give Kansas voters the opportunity to remove the words "mental illness or" from this section of the Kansas Constitution, and so to remove mental illness from the same constitutional class as crime.

It's about time.  Vote yes on Ballot Question No. 2.  

Further information about the ballot question can be found in this Ballotpedia article.

It should also be noted that I personally will vote against retention of three Kansas Supreme Court justices (Justices Nuss, Beier and Luckert) because they joined in promulgating a set of Kansas Suupreme Court rules in July 2009 that moved in exactly the opposite direction from Amendment  Question No. 2--i.e., toward treating mental illnesses EXACTLY like crimes, at least in attorney licensure proceedings.  But that's only what I'm going to do.

Posted by ian_j_site2 at 3:44 PM EDT

Updated: Saturday, 23 October 2010 9:46 PM EDT

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It's not hard to answer the question the press has been raising in recent weeks about why the Obama coalition collapsed.  It collapsed because it abandoned its foundation of actually trying to collaborate WITH the public. 

During the campaign and the transition, the emphasis was on networks of small, local groups that asked for input on major public issues and gave the appearance (false, as it turned out) of actually tring to listen to public input.  The form of the campaign and transition got large nmbers of people to work for the President by giving the foot soldiers an effective illusion of real influence.  It appeared the candidate, later the President-elect, was actually listening.

But something went wrong shortly after the inauguration.  The President stopped listening, even to the public input he had appeared to receive so well before the inauguration.  On issue after issue, once Congress was in session, he preferred politics as usual--though with a Democratic majority that hasn't been seen in some years--over the real change in the very way of doing things in Washington he had previously seemed to promise.   Admittedly, he was aided in reneging on his apparent promise by a Senate which could not do ANYTHING without 60 votes, where the President's party only had 59.  Nevertheless, he stopped listening.

This is not to say that the local groups were disbanded. No, they were preserved, to the extent they could be held together, and the individuals who had enrolled in them to this day continue to receive several e-mails per week urging them to contribute money or contact members of Congress to implement the President's program.  (I know.  I receive these e-mails!)  But the President has quit listening to the small groups, and now focuses on his party's corporate benefactors.

One result of this has been an economic recovery program that very quickly stopped trying to help distressed individuals in favor of an application of the Democratic version of trickle-down economics.  The underlying theory of the Democratic version of trickle-down is the same as the Republican version--if we give enough money to our big corporate friends, eventually they will let some of it trickle down to create some jobs.  Only the list of big corporate friends and the preferred means of making the gift differ, a little bit, between the two parties.  (Republicans tend to favor relieving their friends of taxes others pay, whereas Democrats tend to favor taxing everyone  and giving the money back to their friends directly). The problem with trickle-down, in either partisan form, is that the bigh corporate friends of those in power are only too happy to use the money to create jobs in other countries, where labor is cheaper.  So the effort to build employment through trickle-down is doomed to failure until American labor "catches down" with labor in the Third World.  This is not what the President's supporters wanted, if he had really been listening two years ago.

Another result of this was the health care reform package that was actually enacted.  While it has many good aspects, fundamentally it is designed not to provide affordable health care to normal people but to guarantee the profits of the health insurance industry.  Its centerpiece is its requirement that everyone buy the health insurance industry's product after 2013. The industry, meanwhile, is to be left free to collusively set the price of that product.  (The indutry kept its anitrust law exemption).    This also is not exactly what most of the President's supporters expected two years ago.  

These are only two examples of politics as usual winning out, and the President not listening to the people who elected him.  It is not hard to see why his defunct coalition is not helping him keep control of Congress this year.

Posted by ian_j_site2 at 11:43 PM EDT

Updated: Tuesday, 19 October 2010 8:29 AM EDT

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This posting is in response to the Yahoo Finance article entitled "The Middle Class in America is Radically Shrinking.  Here are the Stats to Prove it."  The problem identified is that the American middle class is disappearing, resulting in a polarization of the US population into the very rich 1 or 2 percent and the 99 percent poor service sector servants.  The Yahoo commentator, it seems to me, has a part of the cause right, but has not completely identified the causes.  The prmary cause, as I see it, is the transition from the historic situation in which the economy was run by rich people to the current situtation in which the economy is run by rich corporations.

There was a reason the framers of the Constitution, and nearly everyone in the Federal and various state governments in the U.S. until about 1870, deeply distrusted corporations. In the early days of our republic, corporations could be created only by a special act of Congress or a state legislature, and were created only for carefully limited purposes for a set period of years.  The framers distrusted corporations because they are not human. Individual wealthy people, like the framers of the Constitution themselves (all of whom were wealthy and influential men) have consciences and normal human ties to their community and nation.  Corporations are artificial people that have no conscience, no ties to the community, and no motives except their own continued existence, expanding power, and, above all, profit.  We are seeing the fruit of going completely and unreservedly corporate in the destruction of our middle class and the impoverishment of almost all of us for the benefit of immortal corporations. 

See my Warning Concerning Idolatry, first posted October 8, 2000, for a related warning about trust in corporations.  I've been saying this for some time!  

Posted by ian_j_site2 at 1:55 PM EDT

Updated: Wednesday, 28 July 2010 9:51 AM EDT

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I have changed the emphasis of the web site that shares space with this blog.  In the past, it was partly to seek state compliance with Federal anti-discrimination law in the administration of attorney licensure, and partly to try to change the long-term outcome in my own individual case.  I have now given up on my own case as a complete lost cause.  The focus of my site is now totally on obtaining the compliance of the Kansas Supreme Court in general, in future cases invoilving other people. The government--including the state courts--should itself comply with the rules it imposes on the rest of us!

To this end, I have completely rewritten the site and added links to a large quantity of research materials--mostly federal statutes and regulations available for free from Federal Government websites and case law available for free from Google Scholar--for the benefit of others who may want to attempt to challenge in Federal court the new (July 2009) Kansas Rules Relating to Admission of Attorneys.   I remain willing to join with others, who have some reasonable chance of ultimate licensure if they win, and to participate fully in such a challenge.  But it would be an exercise in pure futility for me to attempt such a challenge alone.

My newly-rewritten site can be found at Disability discrimination in attorney licensure in Kansas, Warning and Information for future applicants and their attorneys. 

Posted by ian_j_site2 at 7:39 PM EDT

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Mood:  sad

My constitutional question is this: Is it within the enumerated powers of Congress to delegate to a group of private corporations the power to lay and collect a Federal tax for their own benefit? 

Now that all proposals for real health care reform are officially dead, I will raise a constitutional question that I would not have dared to raise while there was still any chance of real reform.  I support real reform, and would not wish my constitutional question to prevent it from occurring.

It seems to me that all of the proposals that were on the table after the death of the public option, by requiring almost everyone to purchase health insurance from private corporations, created taxes for the benefit of those private corporations--the health insurance companies.  That the payment of premiums was to have been, in effect, a tax for the benefit of the insurance companies is demonstrated by the fact that, under all proposals, nonpayment of premiums was to be subject to punishment by the federal government, starting with administrative monetary penalties (collected by the IRS!) and progressing to the threat of criminal prosecution and imprisonment.  The political rhetoric often likened the tax to the requirement to maintain proof of insurance to be licensed to drive.  However, that analogy breaks down because no one is actually REQUIRED to maintain auto liability insurance on threat of criminal penalty.  One only need maintain auto insurance if one chooses to drive--and it is possible to live without driving (many people do it).  The health insurance tax was to be made a condition of simply living.  The choice not to drive is not at all analogous to the choice to commit suicide.

I will grant that such a tax for the benefit of the insurance companies by itself would clearly have been within the powers of Congress under its taxing power (Art. I, sec. 8, cl. 1) and the "necessary and proper" clause (Art. I, sec. 8, cl. 18) IF the proposal had been for the Federal government to collect a tax, in an amount set by Congress, and pay the proceeds over to the health insurance companies to provide coverage. 

However, none of the proposals that died after the Senatorial election in Massachussetts did this.  Instead, all of them merely required individuals to pay the insurance companies directly, in an amount to be determined by the insurance companies themselves.  Moreover, the insurance companies and their premium-setting processes would remain regulated by state law, rendering the amount of this tax geographically non-uniform.  But the most potent objection to this arrangement is simply that it would have given the insurance companies, private entities, the power to determine the amount of the tax without any further action on the part of Congress, that is, the power to lay and collect a tax enforced by the federal government.

According to Article I, Section 8, Clause 1 of the Constitution:

The Congress shall have power

To lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises, to pay the debts and provide for the common defence and general welfare of the United States; but all duties, imposts and excises shall be uniform throughout the United States...

The Constitution gives the power to lay and collect taxes to Congress--and only to Congress.  The Sixteenth Amendment gave Congress the power (formerly denied it by Art. I, sec. 9, cl. 4) to impose proportional income taxes on individuals, but it did not change the fundamental principle that only Congress may lay and collect Federal taxes. Neither did it change in any way the requirement of Art. I, sec. 7, cl. 1, that all bills for raising revenue must originate in the House of Representatives and be concurred in by the Senate.  So bills setting tax rates are to originate in the House, also pass the Senate, and be signed by the President or enacted by Congress over his veto. (Art. I, sec. 7, Cl. 3). 

Congress has in the past on several occasions attempted to delegate some of its Constitutional powers to the Executive Branch, and been rebuked by the Supreme Court for attempting to do so.  Perhaps most relevant to this discussion is the Supreme Court's opinion in Clinton v. City of New York, 524 U.S. 417 (1998), in which the Court invalidated the Line Item Veto Act--which directly involved Congress' powers to raise and spend money--as impermissibly delegating Congressional powers to the President.

If Congress may not delegate a part of its power to spend tax revenues to the President, it seems inconceivable that the courts would permit it to delegate a part of both its taxing and spending power to private corporations that are not subject to the will of the electorate at all.  (Remember the great slogan of the Revolution: "Taxation without representation is tyranny!") 

These constitutional objections would be competely eliminated by going to a Federal single-payer system (which I have supported).  Under a single-payer system, Congress would both levy the taxes to support health care and determine how to appropriate the resulting revenues.

These constitutional objections would also probably be overcome by a system in which individuals could choose either private insurance or a public option.  Such a system could be analogized to a uniform tax, from which individuals could exempt themselves by taking the appropriate actions (purchasing private insurance).  Much of our present income tax law already operates in this way.

But if I were a gambler, I would wager money that the only, or nearly the only, part of health care reform that WILL survive the Massachussetts election will be the requirement that nearly everyone buy health insurance--at whatever rates the insurance companies want to demand.  The companies will gladly let this part of the proposal pass, because they really WANT the subsidy! 

Posted by ian_j_site2 at 9:26 PM EST

Updated: Wednesday, 20 January 2010 9:28 PM EST

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OK.  I confess that I really know what is wrong with the picture I painted in the last post.  The problem is that many of the wealthy and powerful (note that I said "many," not "all") worship wealth and power, live for it, and are willing to sacrifice anyone ELSE, besides themselves and their friends, to get it.  Wealthy oppressors have been around as long as man, as, for instance, the Apostle James wrote

Now listen, you rich people, weep and wail because of the misery that is coming upon you.  Your wealth has rotted and moths have eaten your clothes.  Your gold and silver are corroded.  Their corrosion will testify against you and eat your flesh like fire.  You have hoarded wealth in the last days.  Look!  The wages you failed to pay the workmen who mowed your fields are crying out against you.  The cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord Almighty.  You have lived on earth in luxury and self-indulgence.  You have fattened yourselves in the day of slaughter.  You have condemned and murdered innocent men, who were not opposing you.

James 5:1-5 (NIV).

Those who really believe they are "pulling the strings" that run the world (because God is presently leaving them in that delusion) worship power, and those they have set up as public figurehead leaders in government, the economy, the media, the arts, and the other areas of life, worship wealth (material "progress") and sensual pleasure and urge us to do likewise.  But all such worship is idolatry.  (Ephesians 5:5).  They also, incidentally, urge us to view other human beings as expendable for our own collective purposes, and the visible Church itself has largely adopted this view.  (See, The Human Expendability Fallacy ). I saw more than nine years ago that the end of this would be an economic collapse that would ultimately be so deep that the Church will be absolutely forced to rely on God rather than on the means of this world, and those who refuse to do so will perish.  See my

Warning Concerning Idolatry

first posted October 8, 2000.  The collapse started only a few months after I issued my warning, and is now visibly approaching its climax.  The solution is still what I said nine years ago: the Church must repent! 

What I didn't see nine years ago, however, was that the "elite," the small group of very wealthy people whom God permits to labor under the delusion that they are in control, are orchestrating the final disaster DELIBERATELY and WITH CAREFUL CALCULATION, believing that sacrificing the rest of the world will gain them even more wealth and power.  I picked up this piece of the puzzle from a quite lengthy video presentation

The World Elite, Testimony of Lindsay Williams.

Pastor Williams claims to have inside information, from a member of the world's real ruling elite, to the effect that the United States will be put through an economic collapse from which it can never recover, in approximately two years' time (i.e., about 2011). He also predicts that a great war that will start in the Middle East, likely with Iran (and a few others) and Israel, that will precipitate the entire world into war, at about the same time.  The real, hidden objectives of this economic disaster and great war will be 1) the complete impoverishment of the U.S.A. and the enslavement of its citizens; and 2) the great increase in the wealth of the elite.  Some whole nations of people-notably Israel and Iran-will likely be sacrificed tomake the enslavement of the rest of us possible.

I do not know Pastor Williams, and it is possible that he has misunderstood his sources or been deliberately misinformed about the details.  But, regardless of the accuracy of the details of Pastor Williams' predictions, the MECHANISM he believes will lead to the great disaster is entirely cosistent with what the Bible says about the behavior of the wealthy and powerful, behavior which will become increasingly prominent as the end times approach.  But the "joke" will be on the powerful, as God will bring them violently out of their delusion:

Why do the nations conspire, and the peoples plot in vain?  
The kings of the earth take their stand, and the rulers gather together, against the Lord and against his Anointed.
"Let us break their chains," they say, "and throw off their fetters."
The one enthroned in heaven laughs; the Lord scoffs at them.
Then he rebukes them in his anger, and terrifies them in his wrath, saying,
"I have installed my King on Zion, my holy hill."

Psalms 2:1-6

Posted by ian_j_site2 at 8:43 PM EST

Updated: Wednesday, 30 December 2009 9:40 PM EST

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About the health insurance reform bill now before the Senate, I have a question I'd like someone to answer:

How is the continuation of the insurance industry's antitrust exemption necessary to the preservation of a free market in insurance?

I thought the purpose of antitrust law was the preservation of a free market. 

I suspect the answer is that, when politicians use the term "free market," they lie.  The code words "free market" are a smokescreen; they do not mean what they say.  What they really mean is not "free market," but "status quo." 

The truth is that the health insurance market as it presently exists is not a free market at all.  Entry to the market is carefully regulated by state insurance departments that are wholly-owned subsidiaries of the regulated industry, that are enforcing state laws written largely by the industry.  The terms that will be offered to insureds are agreed upon in a formal oligopolistic fashion by the major insurance companies and their trade associations, then written into state laws and regulations.  Risk rating practices and premiums are similarly a matter of open agreement within the industry.  Real competition in these matters is strictly prohibited.

Therefore, it is clear that Senator Reid's version of health care reform is trying to give the industry the best of both worlds--and the consumer the worst of both worlds.  We are all going to be required to buy health insurance, on whatever terms and at whatever premiums the industry itself decides together to give us.  In the end, there will be no "public option" competing with ythe industry's offerings, and the existing "public options" for certain vulnerable groups (Medicare, Medicaid and VA) are all having their funding reduced to raise funds to support the insurance industry option. 

Moreover, because the industry will retain its complete exemption from the antitrust laws, its decisions about what coverage it will offer in exchnge for its large new subsidy and at what price will be made entirely by the industry itself, behind closed doors, with ABSOLUTELY NO PUBLIC SCRUTINY.  We can be sure that these decisions will be made in favor of maximizing short-term profits, not in favor of better or less expensive health care.  The consumer will pay, not profit.

Of course, the consumer is an ordinary person with real needs, quite insignificant in comparison to a faceless corporate stockholder!

That's what the "free market" is all about, isn't it!

Posted by ian_j_site2 at 10:52 AM EST

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Those who follow this blog know that I originally supported single-payer national health care, and still think it would be the best approach (though it has no chance of passage now).  I later said that I supported the President's public outline for health care reform as the best realistic chance for reform, so long as it contained a "realistic" public option.  However, the "bipartisan" plan that is slowly emerging is far from the President's outline.  

While few details of the "bipartisan" health care reform package have been settled clearly enough to be fed to the public in written form, the comments of those involved in the process reveal both that few large changes may be expected and that some of the changes that will occur will be good for the insurance industry and bad for a lot of people.  Some of these important details may be inferred from single comments that have been repeated, in one form or another, by people on both sides of the process.  Other details must be inferred from pairs of apparently contradictory statements that can only be reconciled with each other by assuming certain plan details.

The first and most obvious problem with Congress' bipartsan approach to the issue is that, in counting the "cost" of the program, they are counting only the relatively short-term costs to be borne by the Federal Government through new taxes.  To evaluate the REAL COST to the ENTIRE ECONOMY of health care reform would require a balancing of the new taxes required against the savings to individuals, employers, and state and local governments that will result from the reform.  But Congress is not even attempting this. What the responsible members of Congress are publicly saying is that a reform that "costs" $1.6 trillion, or even $1 trillion, in new taxes over the next 10 years costs too much.  This debate simply ASSUMES that the new taxes to pay for the government's end of the reform will simply be ADDED to the cost of the present system to its participants (individuals, employers and the government), and that none of the other costs will change.  However, the immediate cost to the government is NOT the whole picture.  It is, in fact, generally agreed that, if this country had a well-functioning health care financing and delivery system, this would ultimately save all of the participants in the system a great deal of money.   It may well be that individuals and employers would end up saving more from the existence of a well-functioning system than they would pay in taxes to maintain it.  But we will never know.

Second, we know now that, because of the expense, the public plan is off the table.  There is still some talk of permitting nonprofit cooperatives into the market, but even that looks a little unlikely.  Note that the very fact that a statute would be needed to merely permit nonprofits to offer health insurance amply proves the point I made in an earlier blog post that health insurance is NOT in any way a free market, but rather a market carefully regulated to insure consistent profits for oligopolistic for-profit insurance companies.  This is absolutely not going to change.  Nonprofit cooperatives, if permited at all, will have to play by the for-profits' coverage, pricing and premium-rating rules.

Third, we know that something at least similar to the current premium rating system, which only pools risks over employment-related groups and not over the whole population, is going to continue.  We know this from the comments of some leading Democrats to the effect that the reform must be limited as requested by big labor, so as not to interfere with multi-employer group plans under collective bargaining agreements.  But because both coverage for everyone and employer contributions for full-time employees are to be mandatory under the new system, the reform would not in any way interfere with union members' ability to get coverage at their employers' expense.  Thus, what these Congressional Democrats are actually telling us is that the rating system that gives many union employees preferential premium rates is not going to change.  This, in turn, implies that the current policy rating system is not going to change very much.

This rating system is the source of the largest inequities in the present system.  Those who are fortunate enough to be employed by large employers that have large group plans, or by nationwide union-administered multi-employer groups under collective bargaining agreements will still get the best rates--though it's really hard to say whether those rates will go up or down as a result of the reform.  Young, healthy people purchasing individual policies, and small employer groups wherein all of the covered employees are young and healthy will still get decent rates, though not as good as those eligible for large group plans.  Small employer groups in which some of the covered employees are older or have health conditions will still pay very high premium rates.    Individual premiums for older people and people who have ever had any serious health problems will remain often prohibitively high  (though the insurance companies will no longer be permitted to exclude coverage altogether).    

Fourth, it is obvious that there are going to be no realistic subsidies to support coverage for those who can't afford it.  The test for subsidy eligibility is quite obviously going to be a straight household gross income "needs test," fixed as a percentage of the federal poverty line in the reform statute itself.  It will make no distinction, for example, between a young healthy couple with healthy children that is eligible for coverage under a union contract and pays 20% of its household income for health insurance, and a couple a few years older with a sick child who must pay 70% of their identical household income in health insurance premiums.  If the subsidy threshhold is set at 200% of the poverty line, as seems quite possible right now, and the household gross income of both of these hypothetical families is 199% of the poverty level, both  families will receive identical subsidies, probably based on the average premiums for young healthy people.  If the household income of both of these families is 201% of the poverty level, neither family will receive any subsidy.       

Fourth, it appears that Congress is really intent upon enacting a measure that will make all of us who have been pressuring it for reform sorry that we ever asked, because it will make a large proportion of the population into involuntary lawbreakers.  This can be seen by reconciling 1) the repated assertions by lawmakers on both sides of the aisle that the reform will mandate that all persons, or their employers, must purchase health insurance and 2) the apparently contradictory admission, by lawmakers again on both sides, that the packages they are presently considering would leave  millions of Americans uninsured.   Wait, if it's mandatory, that means everyone is going to be covered, right?  Well, no.  It means that everyone who can afford coverage is going to be covered.  Many will still not be able to afford coverage, though required to purchase it.  This group would include the millions of unemployed.  Moreover, since eligibility for employer-sponsored group coverage would remain restricted BY LAW (as it is today) to "full-time," permanent employees, most of the millions who work one or more part-time jobs, or can only find temporary work, would also remain uninsured.  The comments made by our members of Congress recognize this.  These uninsured would not be covered under the new law, but would simply become involuntary LAWBREAKERS, criminals whose only crime was being too poor and/or employed by the wrong employer.

This leads to my final point.  In an earlier posting in the "pure satire" channel on this blog, I asked how a law that would make mandatory individual purchase of health insurance would be enforced.  In that posting, I facetiously compared compulsory automobile liability insurance laws to the proposal for compulsory health insurance.  I suggested, by analogy to taking away the drivers' licenses of uninsured drivers, that the only logical penalty for failure to maintain compulsory health insurance would be to take away the lawbreaker's "breathing license."  Unfortunately, Congress appears likely to take my satirical suggestion seriously.  Several members of Congress have publicly suggested that the package they are now working out will include provisions that would remove from all health care providers (including emergency rooms, which now bear this burden) any obligation to provide treatment to any uninsured individual unless that individual immediately, at the time of service, pays for enrollment in a health insurance plan.  This can only mean one thing for those who are really unable to afford the premiums the health insurance industry demands of them--for their crime they will be sentenced to death, at a random and unpredictable time, by untreated medical emergency.  If the statuory income-based subsidy formula says you OUGHT to be able to afford insurance, but in fact you can't afford the rates imposed, we are going to take away your breathing license for your crime!

Posted by ian_j_site2 at 11:45 AM EDT

Updated: Tuesday, 23 June 2009 1:54 PM EDT

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