Twelve Key Issues > Healthcare & Social Security
James Madison said:
“The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined.” (Federalist Papers #45)
The 10th Amendment reads:
“The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”
The Constitution Party opposes the governmentalization and bureaucratization of American medicine. Government regulation and subsidy constitutes a threat to both the quality and availability of patient-oriented health care and treatment. Hospitals, doctors, and other health care providers should be accountable to patients – not to politicians, insurance bureaucrats, or HMO Administrators.
If the supply of medical care is controlled by the federal government, then officers of that government will determine which demand is satisfied. The result will be the rationing of services, higher costs, poorer results – and the power of life and death transferred from caring physicians to unaccountable political overseers.
We denounce any civil government entity using age or any other personal characteristic to: preclude people and insurance firms from freely contracting for medical coverage; conscript such people into socialized medicine, e.g., Medicare; or prohibit these people from using insurance payments and/or their own money to obtain medical services in addition to, or to augment the quality of, those services prescribed by the program.
We call upon all Senators and Representatives in the U. S. Congress to honor their oath to obey the U.S. Constitution by rescinding the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, and encouraged the legislatures of the several states to exercise their sovereignty under the 10th Amendment to deny implementation of said act.
Social Security is a form of individual welfare not authorized in the Constitution.
The Constitution grants no authority to the federal government to administrate a Social Security system. The Constitution Party advocates phasing out the entire Social Security program, while continuing to meet the obligations already incurred under the system. Until the current Social Security system can be responsibly phased out, we propose that:
The Social Security tax must not be a “rainy day” fund which politicians can pirate, or from which they can borrow to cover their errors and pay for their excesses.
Individuals who have contributed to Social Security be allowed to withdraw those funds and transfer them into an IRA or similar investments under the control of the individual contributor.
Any sort of merger between the U.S. Social Security System and that of any foreign country be banned, so the distribution of benefits will not go to persons who have not qualified for payments under American law as legal residents.
Earning limitations on persons aged 62 and over be removed, so that they may earn any amount of additional income without placing their benefits at risk.
Those provisions of the Social Security system which penalize those born during the “notch years” between 1917 and 1926 be repealed, and that such persons be placed on the same benefit schedules as all other beneficiaries.
We support the right of individuals to choose between private retirement and pension programs, either at their place of employment or independently.