Judge's Vinson's Ruling

I was listening to a news-cast on the radio the other day while a bag-load of saline-diluted rituxan dripped into my vein.

The guy seated next to me in the chemo treatment room was in no condition to chat. Neither were the two women sitting across from me. All of them were coping as best they could with The Big Red Bomb.

The Big Red Bomb is the Mother-Of-All Chemos, the one that causes one to lose hair, the one that causes unrelenting fits of nausea, the one that "cooks" the veins.

You won't see The Big Red Bomb advertized on TV in those ads that babble the phrase, "Ask your doctor whether or not (fill in the blank with the name of the drug here, please) is right for you." It's used to battle and, hopefully, kill cancer tumors-- not enhance the size and performance of the male sex organ.

TBRB is administered by the nurses, per the instructions issued by the oncologist, as the first-line-of battle against most tumorous cancers. It's the chemo people fear most.

I'm not sure what kinds of cancer my comrades in the present day have to battle, but I suspect I am the Lucky One. They drip rituxan - which is a titrated & synthesized solution of Rat Spleen (I am not making this up, by the way, and more on a Rat's Anatomy a bit later) -- into me, to rid me of Non-Hotchkins Lymphoma: so far, it seems to be working out OK.

I know by experience, and from casual observation, they will also receive a few more "cocktails" before their day of treatment comes to an end. And if they take their anti-nausea and pain meds, as prescribed, once they get home, the after-effects will begin to ameliorate by, I'm guessing,  this weekend.

I wish them all well!

Other than being Comrades-In-Arms in the Great Cancer Wars, I suspect we all share one other thing in common: we all have Health Care Insurance. I don't have any clue what their treatments cost, but let's just say that, if I didn't have health care insurance, I would be living in an old refrigerator crate -- that is, if I were still alive.

I think about the uninsured frequently: not those who line jam hospital emergency rooms with the sniffles; I am concerned with those without coverage who suffer from cancer, cardiovascular illness, raging diabetes, and a disease of a major organ such as the pancreas.

Those afflictions, and many others, are the Big Ticket Life-Takers. Nobody should face the prospect of abject poverty just because they are ill and they can't find health insurance coverage.

I mention all of this because a newscaster on the radio dial had just announced that Judge Vinson, in Pensacola, had deemed the recently-enacted Health Care Reform Act unconstitutional.

The rabid opponents of ObamaCare -- Big Insurance, Small Manufacturers, Ultra-Conservative Special Interests, and their ilk, actually "shopped" their appeal to the District of Pensacola precisely because the judge who sits there happens to be One Of Them.

Those of us who actually follow the appeal process on this particular bill were not terribly surprised by Judge Vinson's ruling in its particulars: we were, however, stunned that he ruled the that the entire law was unconstitutional because, and I paraphrase here, it violated the Interstate Commerce Clause of the US Constitution.

How did Judge Vinson arrive at that conclusion?

Evidently, he -- or, more probably than not, his clerks -- skimmed through the ObamaCare Law to ascertain what it says, and then went on to rely more on what was said during the Floor Debates in the House and the Senate! The judge latched onto something mentioned by a GOP representative during the House debate. This representative asserted that, if government can "require" a person to get health care coverage, government can also "require" its citizens to eat certain foods, like carrots or broccoli!

Get it? In order to reach the grocers' shelves, produce such as broccoli, carrots, peas, et. al. have to cross State Lines -- ergo implementation of the Interstate Commerce Clause!
Judge Vinson went even further: if government can mandate a healthier diet for the people, people will reduce their visits to their doctors -- thus reducing the overall health care costs to the nation!

What can one say about such outrageous thinking? How about starting right here!

Besides the fact that Judge Vinson compares apples to oranges in his ruling, relying on the Floor Debates to arrive at his conclusions smacks of blatant, political partisanship. Where was Judge Vinson, and what was he doing, when the Great Debates took place in state legislatures on the question of what constituted legal impairment vis a vis driving one's car after consumption of booze?

Legislatures ascertained that a driver went over the limit at .10 after blowing the balloon. Would Judge Vinson overturn that law if, say, an opponent of this standard suggested that the legal limit for drunken driving be established at "pi r-squared?"

Sheesch!

I hope that the full US Court of Appeals and their clerks in Atlanta will, at least, read the entire bill when it gets there on appeal. And in the event the Atlanta Crew sides with Judge Vinson, I trust the US Supreme Court will have the good sense to overturn this travesty.

I have a George Carlin-esque take on this whole mess. In the Great Scheme Of Things, "Big I," with its Political Suck in the Halls of Congress and in the Courts, doesn't give a Rat's Ass about me, you, or anyone else.

All Big I cares about is this: huge profits sweetened by claims denial; full control over trillions of dollars we pay annually for insurance products; and the ability to rub our noses into it in the event we have the audacity to actually file a claim.

PS: "Big I" is not regulated by the feds; that's left to the states. Perhaps that's something well worth looking into...