The Supreme Court must now decide whether individuals can be constitutionally mandated to purchase a basic form of health insurance. I think there is little disagreement that such a plan would be important in providing health care coverage for most every American. For insurance companies to offer customers having major medical conditions a reasonable rate, a pool that includes the very healthy seems necessary to mitigate what would otherwise be a weighty financial burden.
The Court must now decide whether a good bill - a bill that potentially offers major benefits to almost everyone, should be deemed constitutional. But the constitutionality of a legislative act should not depend on its worth or lack thereof. Constitutionality should rest solely on proper reading and interpretation of the various articles, clauses, and amendments of which the Constitution is comprised, and the stare decisis factors involved.
The Affordable Care Act, at best, treads the thinnest of constitutional lines. Never in U.S. history has a citizen been required to participate in a business - in this case the medical insurance business. No one over 26 years of age can choose to opt out, no matter how rich, no matter how healthy - with rare exceptions. Constitutionality primarily resides in interpretation of the "commerce clause" contained in
Article 1, Section 8, Clause 3, of the Constitution which empowers Congress and "to regulate commerce with foreign nations, and among several states, and with the Indian tribes." The term commerce as used in the Constitution means business or commercial exchanges in any and all of its forms between citizens of different states, including purely social communications between citizens of different states by telegraph, telephone, or radio, and the mere passage of persons from one state to another for either business or pleasure.
Interpretation has always been directed at parties actively involved in some form of commercial activity. There has never been a legal compulsion for citizens to participate in a commercial activity should they choose not to do so. Though the argument can be made that all citizens participate in the "business of health" - if not on an active basis, on a passive basis - by the mere virtue of being alive, the case is hardly dispositive. To add to the interpretive complexity, citizens are not actually required to participate in the "business of health," but in the "business of insurance."
My feeling is that a federal requirement to buy health insurance, though advantageous to the general welfare on its face, does not pass constitutional muster. Matters that the government feels are proper for the general health and welfare of its citizens, should be supported by the citizenry via a properly applied tax or tax credit. The taxing power of the federal government remains unquestioned and without challenge.
It appears that the legislative process, finding itself unable to provide needed health care to the citizenry via a "Medicare for all" system, passed an act that compels purchase of a commercial product - an act that stretches the interpretation of the Constitutional commerce clause too far.
The Court must now decide whether a good bill - a bill that potentially offers major benefits to almost everyone, should be deemed constitutional. But the constitutionality of a legislative act should not depend on its worth or lack thereof. Constitutionality should rest solely on proper reading and interpretation of the various articles, clauses, and amendments of which the Constitution is comprised, and the stare decisis factors involved.
The Affordable Care Act, at best, treads the thinnest of constitutional lines. Never in U.S. history has a citizen been required to participate in a business - in this case the medical insurance business. No one over 26 years of age can choose to opt out, no matter how rich, no matter how healthy - with rare exceptions. Constitutionality primarily resides in interpretation of the "commerce clause" contained in
Article 1, Section 8, Clause 3, of the Constitution which empowers Congress and "to regulate commerce with foreign nations, and among several states, and with the Indian tribes." The term commerce as used in the Constitution means business or commercial exchanges in any and all of its forms between citizens of different states, including purely social communications between citizens of different states by telegraph, telephone, or radio, and the mere passage of persons from one state to another for either business or pleasure.
Interpretation has always been directed at parties actively involved in some form of commercial activity. There has never been a legal compulsion for citizens to participate in a commercial activity should they choose not to do so. Though the argument can be made that all citizens participate in the "business of health" - if not on an active basis, on a passive basis - by the mere virtue of being alive, the case is hardly dispositive. To add to the interpretive complexity, citizens are not actually required to participate in the "business of health," but in the "business of insurance."
My feeling is that a federal requirement to buy health insurance, though advantageous to the general welfare on its face, does not pass constitutional muster. Matters that the government feels are proper for the general health and welfare of its citizens, should be supported by the citizenry via a properly applied tax or tax credit. The taxing power of the federal government remains unquestioned and without challenge.
It appears that the legislative process, finding itself unable to provide needed health care to the citizenry via a "Medicare for all" system, passed an act that compels purchase of a commercial product - an act that stretches the interpretation of the Constitutional commerce clause too far.
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