Response to The Green-Left Party in Toby_Zeigler v. United States

SUB SECTION 5: Publicly owned and partially publicly owned hospitals will be run democratically, with the health-care workers employed voting on when to do their jobs and on other decisions currently made by a director or other leader. Workers will elect officials who act when a leader is needed immediately.

In Wickard v. Filburn, the court's opinion quotes United States v. Wrightwood Dairy Co. in an attempt to summarize the law as it stands. In United States v. Wrightwood Dairy Co., Chief Justice Stone says

"The commerce power is not confined in its exercise to the regulation of commerce among the states. It extends to those activities intrastate which so affect interstate commerce, or the exertion of the power of Congress over it, as to make regulation of them appropriate means to the attainment of a legitimate end, the effective execution of the granted power to regulate interstate commerce. ... The power of Congress over interstate commerce is plenary and complete in itself, may be exercised to its utmost extent, and acknowledges no limitations other than are prescribed in the Constitution . ... It follows that no form of state activity can constitutionally thwart the regulatory power granted by the commerce clause to Congress. Hence the reach of that power extends to those intrastate activities which in a substantial way interfere with or obstruct the exercise of the granted power"

However, it appears that the mandatory democratization of hospitals does not achieve a legitimate end. The law says that workers may vote on "when to do their jobs". This seems to suggest that these workers can choose to strike for whatever reason they see fit. Even in strikes involving small amounts of hospital workers, the affects are devastating. The National Bureau of Economic Research published a research paper entitled "Do Strikes Kill? Evidence from New York State". In it, it says...

“They conclude that nurses' strikes were costly to hospital patients: in-hospital mortality increased by 19.4 percent and hospital readmissions increased by 6.5 percent for patients admitted during a strike. Among their sample of 38,228 such patients, an estimated 138 more individuals died than would have without a strike, and 344 more patients were readmitted to the hospital than if there had been no strike. ‘Hospitals functioning during nurses' strikes do so at a lower quality of patient care’”

The fact of the matter is that mandatory democratization does not benefit the general welfare of the citizens of the United States.