OT My emergency room "doctor bill"

The best thing that could happen for supporters of a tax-based single-payer health care system would be that the mandatory insurance rule in the ACA be declared unconstitutional. If that were to happen, we would just nationalize health care and support it through taxes.

Don't kid yourself, that would be the reaction.

Yep, that is my line of thinking too. Forevermore the notion of the private inusrance companies being the solution to the health care crisis would be a nonstarter.

I believe the way this particular law was written was if the mandate is declared unconstitutional the entire law is unconstitutional.

With only 40% supporting this law there is no way the govt nationalizes health care.

Nope, that is merely wishful thinking by the tea baggers sort of like the thought defaulting on the debt wouldn’t have any consequences. As legal matter it just isn't even within mainstream legal thought to invalidate the whole thing. Indeed doing so would be considered judicial activism. If invalidating the mandate makes the bill unworkable because private insurance quits selling policies, that is up to congress to fix not the courts.

Again the larger point you are missing is this won't likely be litigated in the Supreme court for a couple of years so if the mandate fails (I'd say it is about 50/50) congress would have to create a new way to pay for medical services almost immediately, and because of the ruling the new system couldn’t require people to buy private insurance so there wouldn’t be any real choices other than government insurance.

As usual, hoops2 is being dishonest with polling data.

A significant portion of the opposition to ACA comes from Americans who believe ACA doesn't go far enough, that it's not single payer and still pays private insurers to deny care.

In a Kaiser Family Foundation poll last month:
33% said that the health care law needs to be expanded
19% said keep it as is
15% say repeal the law and replace it with a GOP-backed one
20% say repeal the law, replace it with nothing
14% don't know/refused

Among those with an opinion, 60% want the law to either stay as it is or expand it.

Americans who want the law expanded would not react to an order declaring ACA's mandate unconstitutional by demanding a return to pre-Obama policies. They'd demand tax supported, single payer health care, which is what they really want.

What are you going to do if someone goes into a restaurant with no money? Feed them or let them go hungry? Would you feel different if the reason that they have no money is because them spent the last of their money on a new watch? If someone decides they would rather have cable TV or a $80/mo cell phone plan over medical insurance, then that should be their choice. But the hospital or tax payers should not then have to pay their medical bills. If someone is on public assistance and truly can not afford medical care or insurance let alone cell phones or cable TV, then that should be part of the public assistance.

While I have not researched the matter, I've read that Social Security was oppossed by the majority of Americans when it was instituted, and many congressmen were scared for their jobs.

chilcoot finds one poll that supports his position. Here are some with a different story

Poll Date Sample Favor Repeal Oppose Repeal Spread
RCP Average 2/17 - 4/30 -- 48.5 40.8 Favor Repeal +7.7
Rasmussen Reports 4/29 - 4/30 1000 LV 47 42 Favor Repeal +5
Hearst/F&M 4/5 - 4/25 800 A 44 38 Favor Repeal +6
Bloomberg 3/4 - 3/7 1001 A 52 42 Favor Repeal +10
POS (R) 2/17 - 2/21 800 RV 51 41 Favor Repeal +10

When one looks deeper at the kaiser study you find that the study undercounts republicans & Independents and over counts Democrats & other.

Gallup shows the country at 29% Republican, 31% Democrat, 38% Independent & 2% other. kaiser has it 21% Republican, 33% Democrat, 37% independent & 8% other. By undercounting the group that is against health care it skews the numbers in favor of the bill

"Nope, that is merely wishful thinking by the tea baggers sort of like the thought defaulting on the debt wouldn’t have any consequences. As legal matter it just isn't even within mainstream legal thought to invalidate the whole thing."

Normally maliber would be correct but this law is different in the way it was written

As District Judge Roger Vinson explains in his ruling, the bill did not pass with a standard severability clause, which typically bills like this would have. That allows a judge to split off unconstitutional pieces from a bill in litigation while leaving the rest of the bill, having passed Constitutional muster, intact. The severability clause is a feature of almost all major legislation in Congress, and it was in the ACA at one point, but through the different versions, somewhere down the line, it was excised. This gave Judge Vinson the power to decide on his own whether or not to sever the individual mandate from the bill. A previous district judge, Henry Hudson in Virginia, declined, ruling only that the mandate itself was unconstitutional. But Vinson went further, as he explains

meanwhile, no response yet to my letter to the billing company for the doctor....