Founding Father signed health insurance mandate into law

[babylonsister]

http://mydd.com/2010/3/29/founding-father-signed-health-insurance-mandate-into-law

Founding Father signed health insurance mandate into law

by desmoinesdem, Mon Mar 29, 2010 at 10:24:49 AM EDT


State attorneys general have filed two federal lawsuits challenging the individual mandate to purchase health insurance, which President Barack Obama signed into law last week. Those lawsuits look like pure political posturing to me, given the well-established Congressional powers to regulate interstate commerce and taxation.

It turns out that precedent for a health insurance mandate is much older than the 1930s Supreme Court rulings on the Commerce Clause. Thanks to Paul J. O'Rourke for the history lesson:

In July, 1798, Congress passed, and President John Adams signed into law “An Act for the Relief of Sick and Disabled Seamen,” authorizing the creation of a marine hospital service, and mandating privately employed sailors to purchase healthcare insurance.

This legislation also created America’s first payroll tax, as a ship’s owner was required to deduct 20 cents from each sailor’s monthly pay and forward those receipts to the service, which in turn provided injured sailors hospital care. Failure to pay or account properly was discouraged by requiring a law violating owner or ship's captain to pay a 100 dollar fine.

This historical fact demolishes claims of “unprecedented” and "The Constitution nowhere authorizes the United States to mandate, either directly or under threat of penalty...”

Perhaps these somewhat incompetent attorneys general might wish to amend their lawsuits to conform to the 1798 precedent, and demand that the mandate and fines be linked to implementing a federal single payer healthcare insurance plan.

O'Rourke posted the full text of the 1798 legislation as well (at link).

I'm not one to claim American's "Founding Fathers" could do no wrong. After all, President Adams also signed the Sedition Act, which violated the First Amendment. But Republican "strict constructionists" say we should interpret the constitution only as 18th-century Americans would have understood it. Some claim judges should cite only 18th-century sources when interpreting the constitution. Well, Congress enacted and the president signed a health insurance mandate less than a decade after the U.S. Constitution went into effect.

I don't expect these facts to affect Republican rhetoric about health insurance reform. Thankfully, Iowa Attorney General Tom Miller is not wasting our state's money on this frivolous lawsuit. So far I haven't heard any Republicans demand his impeachment, as some GOP legislators are doing in Georgia.

[rasputin1952]

1. John Adams was a little too stiff for my taste...

and the Alien and Sedition Act was a travesty.

But there are other things about him that shine. He had principles, and rarely, if ever allowed things to get in the way of those principles. He was not a friend of slave holders, he raised taxes to build us a Navy, (USS Constitution was built under his watch), and he was never afraid to make his views known, (even when some of those views were directly opposed to the Bill of Rights, like arresting newspaper editors for their criticism of his "stick-in-the-mud" policies).

Adams was adamant about government being an aid to the citizenry, and softened in his later years. One of the oddest things about him, was when he was sent to France to check on Franklin's dealings with the French during the Revolution, his sensibilities were seriously affronted when he discovered that the French were more into "Free Love" than his puritanical sensibilities could take...(but Franklin thought the French were just fine...:D ).

Like most presidents, he had good an bad points, victories and defeats. All things considered, he is slightly underrated; average, yes, forward thinking, yes in many ways, but that puritanical streak was something that held him back from a better presidency.

As for the RWnuts...they wouldn't know the Constitution if they could actually read it.

[BrklynLiberal]

2. Wonder what the Teahadists will make of this...?

[JoePhilly]

3. They will have Texas write Adams out of the history text books ...

[BrklynLiberal]

4. LOL. At this rate the Texas History books will be among the thinnest volumes in the world