The welfare state is a package deal

3

A lawyer friend who specializes in this kind of thing alerts me to this decision, handed down earlier this week in the Washington, D.C., U.S. District Court, ruling that no American can opt out of Medicare without also forfeiting all Social Security benefits. My friend explains the significance:

This is an outrageous result.  The judge held that because once you begin collecting social security benefits you are “entitled” to begin receiving Medicare as well, if you fail to sign up for Medicare, you forfeit your social security that you paid into your whole life. Nothing in either the Medicare Act or the Social Security Act justifies this result.  At bottom, the judge essentially ruled that the word “entitled” means “must sign up for.” So when you and Kara begin drawing on Social Security, know that the Big Plantation will force you to also get on Medicare.  If you don’t, it will actually make you pay back every cent you received from social security.

Hey, as a great movie once taught us: freedom isn’t free.
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Jeremy Beer is a philanthropic consultant. He lives with his wife, Kara, in the Willo neighborhood of her hometown: Phoenix, Arizona. Although he likes Arizona and the land west of the one hundredth meridian generally, Jeremy is from Kosciusko County, Indiana, and considers himself a Hoosier patriot. He believes that Booth Tarkington was one of our greatest novelists, that Jean Shepherd was one of our greatest humorists, that Billy Sunday was our one of our greatest (and speediest) orators, and that Larry Bird is without a doubt our greatest living American. Jeremy obtained his doctorate in psychology from the University of Texas at Austin. From 2000 to 2008 he worked at the Intercollegiate Studies Institute in Wilmington, Delaware, serving finally as vice president of publications and editor in chief of ISI Books. He serves on the boards of Front Porch Republic, Inc., Mars Hill Audio, and Catholic Phoenix. A more complete and much more professional bio can be found here. See books written and recommended by Jeremy Beer.

3 COMMENTS

  1. Its nice to know there are still judges out there who decide cases based on things like desired civil objectives instead of that inconvenient concern for matters of law. Perhaps with the way some folks treat the constitution we’ll be able to rule that their reverence for it is defacto religious in nature and we can forbid anyone from posting it in schools. In a few years no one will even remember the silly thing.

  2. Interestingly, in September 2009 Judge Collyer, denying the Government’s Motion to Dismiss, asserted in a lengthy memorandum that the statutes were totally voluntary and that the POMS formed a completely independent and conflicting set of rules which harmed the Plaintiffs and were subject to judicial review. Up until the current opinion was rendered, Judge Collyer repeatedly asserted the same conclusions in written opinions and orally in Court. She did so as late as oral argument on November 18, 2010. What happened, is anybody’s guess.

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