Mar 25 2011

Death Panels Use Extortian To Force People Into Obamacare

Published by at 7:15 am under All General Discussions

Listen up people – President Obama and his mindless, power-hungry minions have a few short months left to tie us down and remove our freedoms. One area where he is desperate to solidify his liberal schemes is the take over of our nation’s independent and market based health care. Just this week a pliant judge apparently put the finishing touch on a hidden Obamacare ‘feature’ that forces senior citizens into Obamacare, or else lose their Social Security. Worse yet, if they do not enter into Obamacare, they will be forced to pay back all social security benefits received to date:

Yet last week, federal Judge Rosemary Collyer did just that.

The ruling has ominous implications for ObamaCare, enacted one year ago but not yet in full effect: This decision would allow the “health reform” law to become even more Orwellian than it already is, without any action from Congress.

In a case where I served as chief attorney for the plaintiffs, Judge Collyer allowed to stand three internal rules of the Social Security Administration that make receipt of Social Security retirement benefits contingent upon enrollment in Medicare. Plus, a person who withdraws from Medicare would not only have to give up Social Security retirement benefits, but repay all benefits previously received.

All the plaintiffs had paid into Social Security and Medicare throughout their working lives. They were eligible for both programs, but they didn’t want to enroll in Medicare because they had their own savings and health-insurance programs that they preferred.

Indeed, all seniors now must enroll in Medicare, Part A, whether they want it or not. If they don’t, their Social Security retirement benefits will be taken from them.

Now to understand how desperate these bureaucrats are to force people into Obamacare, it is important to understand how illegal this specious penalty is, and how out of bounds the judge’s ruling is.

You cannot be penalized for past actions that were performed under a different set of legal conditions:

An ex post facto law (from the Latin for “from after the action”) or retroactive law is a law that retroactively changes the legal consequences (or status) of actions committed or relationships that existed prior to the enactment of the law. … Ex post facto laws are expressly forbidden by the United States Constitution.

You would think these bureaucrats and the judge would know this basic tenant of US law. In fact, they probably do. The hope is to force so many people off their personally chosen health care and into Medicare (the precursor pool for Obamacare) that they can pull off the fiscal miracle they need. Without these forced ‘beneficiaries’ Obamacare is unable to pay for all its out of control promises.

I find it abhorrent anyone would be this callous and uncaring, but hey – they are liberals. What do we expect from self proclaimed, omnipotent, superior beings!

It is really time to take the gloves off here. This is an illegal act on the part of the administration and a rogue judge. We are going to have to enforce the rule of law on these lawless bureaucrats – or else let America die. When you have the CBO proposing all taxing travel (seems almost communist, doesn’t it) and some idiot state official wanting to tax toilet paper (bringing a whole new meaning to a shitty idea) we have to face facts. We have let politicians and bureaucrats skate around the rules while they impose ever more restrictive ones around our collective necks.

The answer to bloated and expensive government is to cut out the waste – which means everything we could live without.

When the state threatens senior citizens with life ending poverty, a line has been crossed. One of many crossed by the mad liberals now rampant in DC (Libya, Obamacare, Energy, Terrorism, National Debt/Deficits, etc). The House GOP better start getting their act together ASAP. We need hearings to expose all this madness in time for the 2012 election cycle.

Update: Ed Morrissey bores in on the endless stream of ‘dumb ideas’ from DC – like a travel tax. Question: Does that include my mileage on my bicycle trips? How about sail or power boat nautical miles?

11 responses so far

11 Responses to “Death Panels Use Extortian To Force People Into Obamacare”

  1. WWS says:

    from the WSJ report on this:

    “As recently as the fall of 2009, Judge Collyer provided support for the plaintiffs. She rejected the Obama Administration’s argument that the plaintiffs were lucky to get Medicare and therefore had suffered no “injury” and lacked standing. She noted the Clinton POMS are simply part of a government handbook and never went through a formal rule-making. She also refused the Administration’s request to dismiss the suit, noting that “neither the statute nor the regulation specifies that Plaintiffs must withdraw from Social Security and repay retirement benefits in order to withdraw from Medicare.”

    We can only wonder what pressure, or “inducements” this administration applied (or provided) behind the scenes in order to get this Judge to turn on a dime like this.

    It’s not a question of understanding the law – the Judge was completely aware of what was right 18 months ago. What happened to make the change? What did they do?

    http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704461304576216872954763388.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

  2. Rick C says:

    I m not trying to “troll” anyone, but I saw the article in the WSJ yesterday. In reading the comments, one guy supported the decision and left a link to the decision:

    http://thefundforpersonalliberty.org/pdf/110316-54-Memoranum-Opinion.pdf

    Unfortunately, it looks as if Judge Collyer had no recourse. If you read page 7 of the decision, Medicare part A was tagged onto Social Security. The way the legislation was written is if you have Social Security, you have Medicare part A. There is no way not to have Medicare part A if you take Social Security.

    I am assuming that in 1967 no legislator contemplated anyone would not want Medicare part A since it was free to the recipient. But, this was not judicial activism. This was poorly written legislation.

  3. AJStrata says:

    Rick C,

    Your not trolling my friend, just adding information to the debate. Keep it up.

    However, a conflict in the new legislation with the original law should have been adjudicated towards the plaintiffs with a hold put on Obamacare until the legislation cleaned up their mess.

    That is the standard process for conflicted legislation – the people do not pay for the legislature’s mistakes.

  4. dhunter says:

    The people pay endlessly, through the teeth, out the rear, upside down and sideways for the legislatures mistakes!

    drilling moratoriums, lands locked up to exploration, confiscatory taxes, senseless and illegal wars, social engineering through susidies (ethanol) and taxation or tax breaks (Cornhusker kickbacks).

    sadly neither party has the knowledge or will to clean up their act thus the Tea Party must throw ALL the bums out!

    Cutting 60 Billion out of a 1400 Billion deficit is not deficit reduction it is pandering to the tax payers. pulling the wool over our eyes while fleecing us blind!

  5. dhunter says:

    AJ I can’t post to your blog using Firefox only by going through facebook or internet explorer. I just figured this out I wonder how many others are having the same problem?

  6. jan says:

    This is an amazing story. I always thought you had a “choice” as to whether to go on medicare or not. Many doctors simply don’t take medicare anymore because of the poor compensation. What the government is doing is putting everyone reaching 65 into a bureaucratic headlock.

    I also was appreciative of Rick C.’s further explanation, bringing up the hidden technicality tucked into page 7 of social security.

  7. dbostan says:

    Impeachment is a too easy punishment for this commie thug…

  8. Wilbur Post says:

    The political class in this country is hopelessly ineffectual and corrupt.

  9. lurker9876 says:

    dhunter, try cleaning out your history and cookies. Also, try google chrome.

    also, I think the Republicans know that 61B is not enough and that they knew that they need to do more. The difficult part is to educate the Americans that the government must cut not only money but also services.

  10. Redteam says:

    lurker, none of those work. IE, safari, chrome all will work, Firefox will not. cleaning history and cookies do nothing. I recently upgraded to firefox 4 hoping that would help, but no joy.

    Wilbur, that photo of you looks familiar. Do you have any close relatives?

  11. AJStrata says:

    Folks,

    We know we have another issue with the site. We are trying to get to it, but paying the mortgage comes first. Hopefully something come soon. One of those wonderful updates we did months back just went like a cancer through our baseline.

    Thanks for your patience – there are only two of (and one of us writes the posts!).