Evaluating HCEAR Act of 2010 Title I Subtitle A

After a lovely vacation to Hawaii, I am back on the blog.

My goal now is to go through The Health Care and Education Affordability Reconciliation Act of 2010 and find out what it says.

As is already known, this bill, and or many of its sections will have to go through legal battles before its provisions are enacted, but it is officially law at this time, regardless of what happens as it moves along.

The beginning of the Law is a declaration of the title of the Law and a listing of the Table of Contents. The Table of Contents shows that the law has two Titles with multiple sections in each title.

Title I Subtitle A is Coverage

There are five sections to Coverage:

Sec. 1001. Tax credits.

Sec. 1002. Individual responsibility.

Sec. 1003. Employer responsibility.

Sec. 1004. Income definitions.

Sec. 1005. Implementation funding.

These sections pick through the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 and the Social Security Act to make detailed changes in those two current laws that will make the Health Care Act more palatable. I would have to have the Codes handy to compare each change, and perhaps I will another day, but the most well known of these changes is to increase the age of adult dependents from 21 to 27 when considering the money spent on medical expenses for tax deductions.

Probably the most distressing of these sections is section 5 which allows a billion dollars for costs of setting up the administration of the law.

I have been noticing for years the carrot and stick approach to control that The Federal Government has been wielding against the States. The super power that the Feds have through the Internal Revenue Code has created constant monetary motives for States to change policy and conform to what the Federal government wants because money is offered.

The constant run for the money is part of what is making our nation fall apart. Practicalities of region and relationship are second class citizens to the way things have to be handled because of federal requirements.

As anybody who has really studied this will tell you, that change occurred in the New Deal. Here is an example of legal battles that occurred at that time.

In CHAS. C. STEWARD MACH. CO. v. DAVIS, 301 U.S. 548 (1937)
Argued April 8-9, 1937.
Decided May 24, 1937.

The issue was the validity of the tax imposed by the Social Security Act (42 U.S.C. A. 301-1305) on employers of eight or more.

The dissent to the case complained not because government was making employers send money in for workman's compensation, but because the federal government was making the states do it for the workers whether or not the states felt that was a good idea.

Justice Butler said the following in his dissent.

The terms of the measure make it clear that the tax and credit device was intended to enable federal officers virtually to control the exertion of powers of the states in a field in which they alone have jurisdiction and from which the United States is by the Constitution excluded.

A trillion dollars to bait and maneuver the whole health care system is a scary, scary Fund. It is a drop in the bucket considering what health care consists of now, but it is such a tempting amount of money that many very private, self controlled organizations will look at and abandon all kinds of safe, normal habits for the conformity of the government and the money, and when they lose their own good knowledge to take on the ways of the money, they will fail. You think health care is broken now, just wait until everyone starts dancing for the money that the Federal government will now be able to bestow to get things their way. Wannabe Favorites, start lining up now. Pinocchio has an extra set of ears for you - and a tail.