Liberty and Health Care for All

[marmar]

from truthdig:



Liberty and Health Care for All

Posted on Mar 29, 2012
By Bill Boyarsky


In a bare basement law school classroom last week, four students argued the merits and weaknesses of the health care act. It was an exercise no doubt replicated around the country as legal scholars warmed up for the U.S. Supreme Court’s three-day hearing on the law this week—the most searching examination of federal power in decades.

Several miles away at a community health clinic, restaurant workers, gardeners, housekeepers, car washers, nannies, day laborers and others of the low paid who keep Los Angeles running were being given medical care, as were their families. The long-term future of their care awaited the Supreme Court’s decision.

The USC Gould School of Law’s moot court and the Venice Family Clinic offered me enlightening looks at the legal, medical and humanitarian issues involved in this case. The moot court was a useful briefing on what would be discussed by the Supreme Court. The clinic demonstrated the impact of the health care case on the ground.

Barbara Siegel, whom I had met when she was a lawyer representing the poor, had invited me to attend her law school’s moot court on the constitutionality of the law. Three lawyers, including Carlos Moreno, a retired justice of the California Supreme Court, heard the arguments of students representing the federal government and the state of Florida, one of the plaintiffs before the Supreme Court. ................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/liberty_and_health_care_for_all_20120329/