Its just plain wrong for the government to make me buy health insurance. Right now my employer is offering health insurance with a 3000.00 deductible. I wouldn't pay that off for 10 years much less one year! I would be throwing my money away each week (68.00) They need to seriously get back to the drawing board and see why meds cost 10 times more in usa than anywhere else. Now i see why tribes use witch doctors!

States can do things the federal government cannot. It's the same healthcare plan, but it's comparing apples and oranges from a Constitutional standpoint.

Time for te Justices in the Supreme Court to go aead and run for what has become a political office. Presently the Court Members are only a little better at hiding their connections to peddlers

This case is about whether the US Constitution limits the power of the Federal government or not. The MA constitution is a completely different document. From a US Constitutional point of few, the states are supposed to retain all powers not specifically given to the Federal government. The irony is the the MA law may need to be changed (or revoke) if Obamacare is upheld. But if Obamacare is struck down, the power it attempted to exercise is clearly one the states could retain.

Hey Neb, I have to BUY insurance weekly for 68.00. Learn how to read, silly....(face palm)

While JoJo is correct I think there will still be challenges, As to whether it 'should be dropped', only if there's something better.

It is just as wrong for the federal government to tell me what I have to buy as it is for it to tell me who I can marry or what medical procedures I can have.

With an individual mandate, we are all in it together in attempting to survive. Otherwise, alone we face the unaffordable life-saving cost of drugs other forms of health care. Given the current crashing sounds of the elephants stampeding through the fabric of public and private life, health care will not be the end of unraveling of the fabric of public life. Thomas Jefferson envisioned every individual being self-sufficient and, although a laudable abstraction, self-sufficiency for him meant every person having his own spinning wheel and cotton to make his/her own garments. American society has changed since Jefferson's time and we are now mutually dependent upon one another in multiple areas of our lives. Without an individual mandate in health care, those of us with health insurance pay an increased tax in the cost of our insurance premiums for those who do not have coverage.

Our President just want you to be responsible for your own medical care and that basically doesn't start until 2014.Why should other people pay for you? The truth is I don't believe the majority even know all the great things the health care plan encompasses.

I believe all of you have a good point but its hard to think do I spend 68.00 a week for my health or do I use that 68.00 for gas,food or clothes for my kids.I think they should give it to use for free canada,england. Get free health insurance and we are suppost to be the wealthest country. Ok that's my two cents thanks

Mike nothing is for free. For all of those people who do not want to buy insurance, come to the ER with money. I feel my liberty is being violated by having to pay for your medical care. Hospitals are required to treat you but I should not be required to pay for you

That 14th amendment, though, silly, applies that bill of rights to the states. It's uncharteded territory federal and statewise--I'm sure you'd find it equally abhorrent for the state to mandate your level of GM or broccoli consumption. Categorizing the penalty as a tax credit would have easily passed scotus review, but, either due to political chess or checkers, due to grounded or shallow confidence, due to an attempt to not increase the Code's complexity, or due to god knows what, the higher tax with a credit was not argued (from what I understand) which means the penalty must pass some really tough wishy washy balancing tests to pass scotus, and it could, but that wishy washy test would apply equally to the fed, Hawaii, NH, or MA--unless the states recategorize the penalty a tax--leading to a question of form over substance.

Basically, opine on things you have some knowledge of, and stop repeating what in the business world would equate to new advertisements of Windows ME--I myself, after paying 72$ for my tank, said I am 100% Gingrich--meaning 36$ or so.

I'm a finance/biz law person and know little about con law, but I can opine that if the fed can regulate domestic relations under the commerce clause it can regulate just about EVERY thing it chooses--so if the fed can't do it, the MA bill won't either unless it is legally reframed.

Part 2
I'm a finance/biz law person and know little about con law, but I can opine that if the fed can regulate domestic relations under the commerce clause it can regulate just about EVERY thing it chooses--so if the fed can't do it, the MA bill won't either unless it is legally reframed. And, btw, J. Kennedy is not Simon Powell and pointed question may be as much to create a bright line test btwn HC/ broccoli as they may be to show the justices' feelings.

Repeating others' $$$ sponsored 'facts' is not your own opinion, and, considering you are not judged by your confidence in the delivery of text comments, repeating ignorant facts makes you sound just that: ignorant.

Energy education healthcare what do these have in common the govt has gotten involved and prices have gotten astronomically high afterwards. We need to turn back the clock pre Wilson and everything would improve one more thing no one has touched on maybethe prices are high because our dollar is losing value everyday instead of micro managing our lives the govt should be exceeding some fiscal responsibility

Exercising

And even at the age of 28, I need to adopt to our current reality: If your idea don't fit on a bumper sticker, it ain't worth marketing----or as GWB geniously put it "this guy...this guy (gore) is all about #s and ....". We want slogans not information. Yes, webmaster, this means I do not appriciate cutting my msg into pieces--on an iPhone at that :)!

To branden: If your comment was directed at my gas price joke, then two things: the dollar has nothing to do with the(recent) gas prices--even Bachman's threats on Iran have likely surpassed the dollars effects on gas---and btw, same goes for that pipeline, which should be approved for the sake of the jobs alone IMO). The fed is a beast with a gazillion conflicting heads--and with each head looking to increase its share--and never give up a bite. This beast is also beneficial, but clearly at a cost. I can't tell you what the efficient level of govt is, but Im pretty certain it ain't our current 'states'. Read agency theory and why firms cannot grow forever for an analogy.

kathleen byrne-if you think $68 a week is bad, try this on for size! My wife & I are 56 and 60, respectively. We live in NH, where the only insurer is Anthem BC, a subsidiary of Wellpoint Corp. We pay $9,500 a year, for a policy with an annual $10,000 deductible. After that, they claim they cover 100% of all costs until the end of the calender year. $20,000 a year before they cover a thing.
Now it gets better-I was diagnosed with lymphoma at the beginning of Feb and just passed that $10,000 deductible simple being tested! I was in a CT scanner for 15 minutes, three scans, and my responsibility for the cost? $7,300! That's what put me at the $10,000 mark. If I need chemo, will they pay it? I don't trust them to. And what can I do if they refuse? Their NET income, every year good and bad, is in the billions-how would I fight that? And is Obamacare and its onerous mandate going to change this? I seriously doubt it, and here's why....according to Frontline documentary that follows the passage of that insane bill, when it came to getting it through the senate, the White House had to negotiate with Montana senator Max Baucus. He conveniently produced two staffers to negotiate with the WH team, one a former United Heathcare exec and the other a former Wellpoint exec. Howard Dean looks right into the camera and says they re-wrote this bill in favor of their former employers, eliminating all the very safeguards that would prevent what is happening to me! more 2 say-but no space left

Obama accepted these changes to get it passed. It appears to be more about ego, than fixing healthcare. Oh-and 30 to 50 million uninsured coming on to insurance through the mandate? Who's paying for that? All of us taxpayers, who can't afford it for ourselves! How does Wellpoint get away with this? They have a 16 member board with four very heavyweight members: Donald W. Riegle, Jr., 8 term congressman/senator from Michigan (and member of the Keating 5-those esteemed senators and reps. that helped Charles Keating bring on the Savings and Loan scandal 22 years ago), William H.T. Bush, brother of Bush 41 and uncle of Bush 43, Susan B. Bayh, attorney and wife of Senator Evan Bayh of Indiana (how cozy, with Wellpoint based in Indiana) and Sheila P. Burke, secretary to the senate in the mid 90's, to name a few. Oh-they also have one physician on the board.

That's one of the two companies that brought us Obamacare-God help us. And to all of you-do not get sick!

T Brown

If the government can't require consumers to pay for services they use then it also cannot require providers to render those same services without a guarantee of payment.

This would make your ability to pay the very first vital sign that EMT's and ER staff will check as they determine what course of treatment you will receive.

Liberals will argue that this will make illness a capital offense for those on the lower end of the economic scale.

Conservatives will argue that this is how the free market should work and that a person's fate is the cumulative result of their life decisions.

The question is which vision is consistent with view of how Americans should manage our nation's wellbeibg?

I would be a whole lot more in favor of Obamacare if the people who created and voted for it didn't also vote themselves exempt from having to use it. If this insurance is so awesome, why don't THEY want it???