How ObamaCare will result in limitless and arbitrary intrusions into our lives:
Does a law or a bill constrain the power of officials — both elected and appointed — by the principles of the law? Or does it empower the officials to define the meaning of the law as they wish, to apply it in an open-ended manner, and to write regulations in order to expand their power?
…we will not be free to escape either the regulations which a faceless bureaucracy will write in order to enforce its edicts, or the decisions made by such bureaucrats over our lives.
If you are an employer, you will not escape punishment if a bureaucrat decides that your health plan is not “acceptable” and that you must be fined for your failure to meet his decision. If you are an individual who does not want to purchase full-coverage health insurance, but would rather buy catastrophic insurance that covers hospitalization only, your decision will not be “acceptable” and you may face a government audit and a new tax.
Do you have a serious disease? Does your doctor wish to readmit you to the hospital? A bureaucrat will decide whether or not you get treatment, based on a statistical analysis of the number of such readmissions by the bureaucrats: “excess readmissions shall not include readmissions for an applicable condition for which there are fewer than a minimum number (as determined by the secretary) of discharges for such applicable condition for the applicable period and such hospital” (Sec. 1151).
The scope of power here extends to the very definitions of terms within the law. This leaves the meaning of the law fluid and subject to the will of the bureaucrats.
Just the way they want it.
I’m starting to think that even for the “worst bill ever”, this has a surprising amount of downside. Opening a wide avenue to a future dictatorship is not an essential element of a health care system.