by Bill Butler

Previously
by Bill Butler: Foreclosure
Fraud in a Nutshell

According
the Affordable Care Act’s (“ACA”) website,
ACA is:

…a health
care law that aims to improve our current health care system
by increasing access to health coverage for Americans and introducing
new protections for people who have health insurance

ACA in fact
is a lobster
trap. It is also crony socialism’s latest and most dangerous
assault on what remains of the free market for health care.

THE
ACA LOBSTER TRAP: THE “EXCHANGE”

As a condition
to implementing ACA, ACA requires that every State (and, interestingly,
the federal territories) establish a health care “Exchange.”
The Exchange is a computer database of programs and designed to
implement ACA within the States. Through the Exchange, authorized
health care providers, participating employers and individuals
and payers (insurers and the federal and state governments) will
input information designed to create a “market” for
health care services.

In order
to create a market, however, ACA needs “information.”
Specifically, it needs information on the people who will be demanding
services from this market – the lobsters. What if the lobsters
are too smart to enter the trap themselves? ACA demands that the
States to throw the lobsters into the trap by populating State
Exchanges with their personal, private financial and health data
without any lobster first giving their consent. ACA can never
go anywhere without complicit State actors.

An example
of the information that will become part of each state’s Exchange
is found in Exhibit
D of the State of Minnesota’s $41-million Exchange
Contract with Virginia-based “Maximus” corporation.
Governor Mark Dayton entered into the Exchange Contract through
the executive fiat of an Executive
Order without legislative action. In Exhibit D, Governor Dayton
authorized the State of Minnesota to provide Maximus with the
following information on its citizens: private data, health records,
chemical health records, HIPPA-protected health information, Electronic
Health Information and federal tax information.

Not only
has no Minnesota lobster consented to allowing the State of Minnesota
sharing his personal, private health and financial data with the
ominous-sounding Maximus, no Minnesota legislator has passed a
law permitting Governor to establish the Exchange. Yet over $41
million in funds will flow through the Minnesota State treasury
to Maximus.

THE
REALITY OF THE ACA “MARKET”

ACA will
in fact create a “market.” But the market will be a
federally controlled and federally regulated oligopoly and will
therefore resemble the Soviet Union bread market. Government will
determine who is an authorized provider and will therefore determine
(and therefore limit) supply. Government will also determine who
is an authorized payer (only authorized insurers and the government
itself through Medicare and Medicaid) and therefore limit “demand.”

Although
the hapless lobsters who enter the trap based on the promise of
“improved health care” will think that it will serve
their “demand” for health care, it will not. ACA is
to stop the gushing of red ink from federal Medicare and Medicaid.
The only way to do this is to for the federal government to get
control of costs. The only way to do this is for the federal government
to complete control of the market and deny payment, deny services
or exclude providers who, according to the federal government,
“overcharge.” This is already happening and ACA is not
even off the ground. Just look at the recent actions of Massachusetts
Governor and Obama acolyte Deval Patrick. He has signed
a “cost containment” law that will limit state ACA
expenditures. Moody’s reports that the law is “credit negative”
for hospitals as will “limit revenue growth” and “reduce
their operating flexibility.”

The reality
of ACA is that the very wealthy and the independent thinkers will
avoid the lobster trap and will seek free-market health care outside
of ACA and will obtain real, discerning, market-based holistic
health care. The poor lobsters who enter the allopathic
ACA trap will soon realize that it will not and cannot provide
the services they need. They will wake up to the fact that the
ACA system resembles the Bataan
Death March more than the health care they once enjoyed. That
is when the hapless lobsters will discover what the federal government
really means by “universal” health care – there is no
way out.

CRONY
SOCIALISM

The great
Murray Rothbard commented that the “State is a gang of thieves
writ large.” Nowhere is this more evident than in ACA and
government involvement in health care generally.

For example,
Minnesota has its own diluted version of ACA called “MinnesotaCare.”
In order to get the dollars that flow from the federal and state
Medicare and Medicaid troughs, a group of politically connected
University of Minnesota physicians established a company called
“UCare.”
The idea behind UCare was to make UCare one of the preferred
providers for MinnesotaCare: to get first in line at the trough.
In 2011, UCare quietly “gifted” $30 million to the State
of Minnesota. This gift in fact represented sums that UCare had
overcharged the State for Medicaid services. State Health and
Human Services Commissioner Lucinda Jesson suggested to the UCare
cronies that they characterize the payment as a “gift”
so that the State of Minnesota (Crime Family No. 2) would not
have to share the overcharges with its partners in crime, the
federal government (Crime Family No. 1). Leader of Crime Family
No. 1 Senator Chuck Grassley, however, discovered the lack of
honor among thieves, demanded payment and got
it.

And so will
be the fate of ACA. The free market price mechanism has a way
of keeping people honest. Free market prices did not exist in
the Soviet bread market and do not exist in ACA Exchanges. The
winners in the ACA system will the UCare’s of the world: socialist
cronies who can steal $30 million in full public view and then
avoid prosecution by calling return of the ill-gotten loot a “gift.”

A TAX?
REALLY? IS IT REALLY CONSTITUTIONAL?

In the United
State Supreme Court’s decision regarding Obamacare, turncoat
Justice John Roberts avoided a “commerce clause” challenge
by calling the ACA’s penalty for non-compliance a “tax.”

Exposing
the lobster trap nature of ACA, its opponents properly pointed
out to Justice Roberts that the ACA cannot be a tax, because the
penalty will apply to everyone who refuses to purchase health
care insurance through the Exchange. Taxes that apply to everyone
are “direct” taxes and the United States Constitution
does not allow “direct” taxation without apportionment
(division in accordance with state population). Unapportioned
federal taxes can only be lawful if they are indirect, excise
taxes. Indirect, excise taxes are constitutional because they
can be avoided. The federal 19 cents per gallon gas tax is an
example. Don’t want to pay the tax? Ride a bike.

Peter Schiff
explains the difference between a constitutional indirect tax
and an unconstitutional indirect tax here.

Justice Roberts
response? Here it is:

A
tax on going without health insurance does not fall within
any recognized category of direct tax. It is not a capitation.
Capitations are taxes paid by every person, “without regard
to property, profession, or any other circumstance.” Hylton,
supra, at 175 (opinion of Chase, J.) (emphasis altered). The
whole point of the shared responsibility payment is that it
is triggered by specific circumstances – earning a certain amount
of income but not obtaining health insurance. The payment is
also plainly not a tax on the ownership of land or personal
property. The shared responsibility payment is thus not a direct
tax that must be apportioned among the several States.

Justice Roberts
says: the health care penalty tax is not a direct tax because
no one in the past has every tried to tax everyone directly for
health care. If no one in the past has ever tried it, then it
cannot be a direct tax now. This is a perfect example of circular
reasoning fallacy.

Then he no-so-deftly
admits that the penalty applies to everyone (that is, it is an
unconstitutional direct tax), but it is only “triggered by
specific circumstances.” That circumstance is being lobster
who may have unwittingly entered an ACA Exchange by accessing
its medical care and then later earning “a certain amount
of income.”

That is when
the lobster discovers the trap.

CONCLUSION

Murray was
right.

October
1, 2012

Bill
Butler [send
him mail] is a Minneapolis attorney and the owner of Butler
Liberty Law.

Copyright
© 2012 by LewRockwell.com. Permission to reprint in whole or in
part is gladly granted, provided full credit is given.

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