John Adams, raging socialist!

[Landslide Lyndon]

I wonder what the teabaggers think about that.

http://politicalcorrection.org/blog/201101200002

House Republicans are celebrating yesterday's symbolic vote to repeal the Affordable Care Act, but they will have to dismantle the bill incrementally or defeat it in court to achieve their goal of undoing President Obama's health care law. On the judicial front, conservatives have rallied around legal challenges to the individual mandate, which was originally a Republican idea and enjoyed the support of a "bipartisan consensus" — in the words of Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) — as recently as July 2009.

However, as Forbes blogger Rick Ungar writes, mandating the ownership of health insurance isn't entirely unprecedented, much less unconstitutional. In 1798, President John Adams signed "An Act for the Relief of Sick and Disabled Seamen," which required privately employed sailors to pay a tax to fund their medical care:

    In July of 1798, Congress passed — and President John Adams signed — "An Act for the Relief of Sick and Disabled Seamen." The law authorized the creation of a government operated marine hospital service and mandated that privately employed sailors be required to purchase health care insurance. [...]

    As for Congress' understanding of the limits of the Constitution at the time the Act was passed, it is worth noting that Thomas Jefferson was the President of the Senate during the 5th Congress while Jonathan Dayton, the youngest man to sign the United States Constitution, was the Speaker of the House.

[Keystone Phil]

I don't think John Adams was ever a Tea Party hero so I'm not getting your point here.

[Brittain33]

The Tea Party claims that the insurance mandate is a theft of our freedom that is contrary to what the founders believed. They're all about claiming the essence of the American Revolution and tri-corner hats and all that. It seems to me that most of them probably have no idea what the Founders really believed or that they disagreed with each other, it's all about claiming moral authority for what they want to do or think they want to do in the here and now.

[Brittain33]

Note that despite his calls for violence, Thomas Jefferson didn't respond to this law by shooting members of Congress.

[Keystone Phil]

Note that despite his calls for violence, Thomas Jefferson didn't respond to this law by shooting members of Congress.

You really want to go down this road again, eh? 

[Lief 🗽]

There are actually a number of instances in American history, including in the early days of the republic, where legislation regulating "economic inactivity" (as the individual mandate is argued to do) was passed:

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http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2011/01/clearly_constitutional.html

I mean, look at the first bullet point. George Washington signed a bill passed by a Congress made up of people who wrote and signed the constitution that required people to buy guns. If the individual mandate is unconstitutional, so is one of the very first laws, signed by our very first president, written by the people who wrote the constitution.

[Landslide Lyndon]

I don't think John Adams was ever a Tea Party hero so I'm not getting your point here.

Well, if you bothered to follow the link and read the article there is the following paragraph:

"As Paul J. O'Rourke suggested previously, perhaps conservatives should "name Presidents John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison et al. in the lawsuits," too."

[Sam Spade]

Forbes must be really getting behind the times.

http://volokh.com/2010/04/02/an-act-for-the-relief-of-sick-and-disabled-seamen/

[Brittain33]

Note that despite his calls for violence, Thomas Jefferson didn't respond to this law by shooting members of Congress.

You really want to go down this road again, eh? 

I should have worded it more carefully to avoid making a direct analogy to Tucson, but I mean what I said about Jefferson not seeing this as an occasion to "water the tree of liberty with the blood of patriots" as many people have been saying they feel the current health care reform does.

[Brittain33]

Forbes must be really getting behind the times.

http://volokh.com/2010/04/02/an-act-for-the-relief-of-sick-and-disabled-seamen/

It's a good precedent for universal health care funded by taxes. Interesting. I wonder if the Tea Party types would consider that less of an intrusion on their liberty than the mandate.

[Lief 🗽]

Forbes must be really getting behind the times.

http://volokh.com/2010/04/02/an-act-for-the-relief-of-sick-and-disabled-seamen/

Well, if Republicans would rather we just had a single-payer or medicare for all system funded by payroll taxes, like the founders intended, I'd be fine with that as well.

[Grumpier Than Uncle Joe]

I've seen what px posted before and if that's the best argument you can make to suggest the founders had their own Obamacare, I think it's a poor one.

[Sam Spade]

Forbes must be really getting behind the times.

http://volokh.com/2010/04/02/an-act-for-the-relief-of-sick-and-disabled-seamen/

It's a good precedent for universal health care funded by taxes. Interesting. I wonder if the Tea Party types would consider that less of an intrusion on their liberty than the mandate.

Don't know, don't care.  The fact that universal health care (whatever that means) could be funded by taxes is not really in question, at least not since Butler.

[Brittain33]

I've seen what px posted before and if that's the best argument you can make to suggest the founders had their own Obamacare, I think it's a poor one.

There's no way they could have had their own Obamacare back then, life was far too different. It's an argument that the Founders were willing to make this kind of law when supposedly it was unthinkable to them in that era of imaginary universal freedom.

[Torie]

Medical care back then did as much harm to patients as good.

[Insula Dei]

Am I alone in finding the American tendency to justify their arguments by invoking the Founding Fathers bizarre? Noone in France would ever say :'This is a good idea because Napoleon/Danton/whoever you want said this and that on the topic, which I interpret as supporting my general argument.'

[Landslide Lyndon]

Medical care back then did as much harm to patients as good.

That's irrelevant.

[Brittain33]

Medical care back then did as much harm to patients as good.

That's irrelevant.

It's a nice irrelevance, though.

[Brittain33]

Am I alone in finding the American tendency to justify their arguments by invoking the Founding Fathers bizarre? Noone in France would ever say :'This is a good idea because Napoleon/Danton/whoever you want said this and that on the topic, which I interpret as supporting my general argument.'

There's a much weaker tradition of invoking Joan of Arc in ultra-nationalist circles.

[Torie]

Medical care back then did as much harm to patients as good.

That's irrelevant.

My point is that medical care (such as there was) did not cost much really, until well, about the time medicare kicked in, pumping the system with dough, which together with medical science finally getting its act together, creating exponentially more and better and more expensive treatments, caused the cost of medical subsidies to begin to reach critical mass, and explode. It was sort of like social security, when the average life expectancy was around 58 or something, rather than 81, or whatever. Who knew it would be a ticking time bomb?

[Brittain33]

Who knew it would be a ticking time bomb?

It's more like a campfire that became a small forest fire that is now 90% controlled and giving off a gentle warmth if you're far enough away. I take the point that it's a lot more costly than Bismarck envisioned, but it's not going to explode. Kind of like how Theodore Roosevelt might not have imagined his Great White Fleet evolving into a $700 billion annual defense outlay. Medicare, on the other hand...

[Torie]

Yes, I know, the SS thing is akin to but a common cold as compared to the metastasizing aggressive cancer that is the more appropriate metaphor for what confronts us with medical subsidies. But that is more a matter of degree than kind, so I thought I would drop both dimes into my post anyway. We would be in far worse shape with SS without all of those illegal aliens, by the way. Hispanics are going to be paying my social security check!  Who knew? 

[Lief 🗽]

Am I alone in finding the American tendency to justify their arguments by invoking the Founding Fathers bizarre?

No, it's one of the worst things in American politics.

[Free Palestine]

The Alien and Sedition Acts were passed by the same Congress and signed by the same president.

[cinyc]

Am I alone in finding the American tendency to justify their arguments by invoking the Founding Fathers bizarre? Noone in France would ever say :'This is a good idea because Napoleon/Danton/whoever you want said this and that on the topic, which I interpret as supporting my general argument.'

Well, if the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland had a single, written constitution or countries like France and Germany didn't keep throwing out their history and creating new governments every few generations, I suspect you'd have more reverence to the views of the founders when determining the meaning of constitutional text.