Quote:
Is health-care reform constitutional?
By Randy E. Barnett (TBP)Sunday, March 21, 2010 in The Washington Post
With the House set to vote on health-care legislation, the congressional debate on the issue seems to be nearing its conclusion. But if the bill does become law, the battle over federal control of health care will inevitably shift to the courts. Virginia's attorney general, Ken Cuccinelli II, has said he will file a legal challenge to the bill, arguing in a column this month that reform legislation "violate[s] the plain text of both the Ninth and Tenth Amendments." On Friday, South Carolina Attorney General Henry McMaster and Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum announced that they will file a federal lawsuit if health-care reform legislation passes.
The individual mandate.
Can Congress really require that every person purchase health insurance from a private company or face a penalty? The answer lies in the commerce clause of the Constitution, which grants Congress the power "to regulate commerce . . . among the several states." Historically, insurance contracts were not considered commerce, which referred to trade and carriage of merchandise. That's why insurance has traditionally been regulated by states. But the Supreme Court has long allowed Congress to regulate and prohibit all sorts of "economic" activities that are not, strictly speaking, commerce. The key is that those activities substantially affect interstate commerce, and that's how the court would probably view the regulation of health insurance.
But the individual mandate extends the commerce clause's power beyond economic activity, to economic inactivity. That is unprecedented.
While Congress has used its taxing power to fund Social Security and Medicare, never before has it used its commerce power to mandate that an individual person engage in an economic transaction with a private company.
Regulating the auto industry or paying "cash for clunkers" is one thing; making everyone buy a Chevy is quite another.
Even during World War II, the federal government did not mandate that individual citizens purchase war bonds.
If you choose to drive a car, then maybe you can be made to buy insurance against the possibility of inflicting harm on others.
But making you buy insurance merely because you are alive is a claim of power from which many Americans instinctively shrink. Senate Republicans made this objection, and it was defeated on a party-line vote, but it will return.
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I don't want a Chevy, I don't want the government to own another private industry (insurance) which they eventually will when the insurance companies go broke because the people making 10+ an hour get tired of paying for the insurance of those making less.
I don't want to be
mandated to buy anything, that is just out right Unconstitutional.
This Bill is not the Right One, and I am deeply disappointed with our President for what he is doing, for his adolescent behavior, like a spoiled child throwing a tantrum because he isn't getting what he wants.
He needs to be sent to the House, oh, wait he was and he just bullied them over.
How does if feel to be bullied America.
Just keep sitting back and taking it and calling it change, yeah, change is coming, All the change you once had in your pocket, gone. And a weakened health care system to boot, how many people are going to want to Be Doctors when they get paid on a government based system. We are going to end up with a bunch of mediocre doctors who aren't working for themselves and their own recognition, the 'self' is what makes America great.
This Bill is the beginning of the removal of the 'self' which America was so proudly built upon.