US Supreme Court Upholds Affordable Health Care Act

[Kevin]

For me, I think it is clear that we need to decouple insurance (or at least the basics) from employment, and we need to put people in charge of making more of their own health care purchase decisions. I think the method, and level of government subsidy is a secondary concern to establishing a system for a health care economy that isn't either heavily rationed or subject to runaway inflation.

I agree that insurance shouldn't be coupled to employment, which means people can choose their own, but I don't have an issue with the government being one of those options that they can choose, and I want the government to take a bit of money from me make sure those who don't have the same income potential/opportunities as myself get health care, both preventative and reactionary care.

Sure there will be people that abuse the system, humans are clever and/or lazy and they find ways to exploit anything. I simply accept that as part of the price I pay for the benefits of living in a structured society. I want that society I'm a part of to be as educated and healthy as possible. I want my government to provide some minimal levels of both (so public health care and public education options). I prefer those options to be as optional as feasible. I understand not everyone will agree on that minimal level and some feel it should be none, but I think those people should be educated on the benefits they get from living in a structured society and to try and evaluate what that might cost them for that value.

I'm trying to be careful to use the words structured society because like you I don't want that convoluted with freedoms/liberty. You have to pay a price in those areas for some of the structure too.

I worry that the balance, sometimes delicate balance, this all takes is not being met. But as I mentioned earlier, I'm glad that we have at least started down the road to reform because the system we have now is broken and change is hard to accept, and hard to accomplish. I'm aware this will take time, I still hope and belief things will work out well in the end. I didn't have that belief 15 years ago when I had my first realizations of how broken the current system was (and I was late to the party on that, but I was also only 22 at the time).

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That's the cool thing about appointments for life. Politics may make the selections, but they can't determine where the justices' opinions will drift to.

Yep, I do think the current structure is a good one as far as the SCOTUS is concerned.

I'm no longer convinced that the House/Senate structure and methods of appointment are good. States are not as powerful as they used to be, I'm not sure they need to be, so I'm not sure we need two houses. Of course if the US could just fix the way we vote for the house and senate the design might start working more as it was intended/envision. I keep being told that many of the founders were against the idea of political parties. I'm not, but a voting system that doesn't drive everything to a two party state would be nice.