Is Obama-care’s “individual mandate” — the requirement that all Americans buy health insurance — an unconstitutional infringement on individual liberty? Federal Judge Henry E. Hudson thinks so. On Monday, he ruled the mandate unconstitutional, saying it “exceeds the constitutional boundaries of congressional power.” The decision catapulted the controversial health reform law back into the spotlight, with Hudson’s decision earning applause from conservatives and arguments from the White House. The debate almost certainly sets up a Supreme Court showdown to resolve the issue.
Why is the federal government mandating the purchase of health insurance? Should it? Joel Mathis and Ben Boychuk, the RedBlueAmerica columnists, debate the issue.
JOEL MATHIS
Let’s be clear: Conservatives didn’t think the individual mandate was unconstitutional in the 1990s — when the conservative Heritage Foundation came up with the idea, then pitched it as an alternative to President Bill Clinton’s health proposals. No tea partiers shouted about “tyranny” just a few years ago, when GOP Gov. Mitt Romney made the requirement a centerpiece of Massachusetts’ health law.
While some conservatives sincerely see the mandate as an intolerable infringement upon American freedom, it’s not unreasonable to think the GOP is cynically moving the goalposts in its never-ending opposition to Democratic policy ideas — even if those ideas were originally Republican.
The irony: The mandate was an effort to leave health insurance in the hands of private industry and avoid a true government takeover of the health care system.
During the 2009 debate, after all, many Republicans agreed reform should include a rule that insurance companies couldn’t deny coverage to customers with pre-existing conditions. But that left open the likelihood people would wait to get sick before buying insurance — saddling companies with the costs of sick patients without enough healthy customers to help pay the way. That would’ve driven the companies into bankruptcy and, in all likelihood, triggered the rise of a government-run “socialized” health insurance system.
So there are good policy reasons for the individual mandate. But as a political matter, many liberals recognize that the mandate is a particularly ugly way to make the sausage of health insurance reform — more likely to trigger protests against the bill rather than make Americans grateful for the welfare state.
There are less-burdensome ways to replace the individual mandate. Insurers could offer financial incentives for early sign-up and penalties for late arrivals, the way parts of Medicare work now. Other, market-friendly ideas abound. But never fear: Republicans would certainly oppose those ideas, too. They always do.
BEN BOYCHUK
Judge Hudson’s decision to void Obama-care’s individual mandate provision wasn’t about whether a think tank came up with an idea 15 years ago only to repudiate it later on. Nor did the federal court’s decision have anything to say about the wisdom of Mitt Romney’s state-based health care reform scheme. (Although it’s worth mentioning that Romney, too, promised his plan would save Massachusetts taxpayers scores of millions of dollars by harnessing market forces. It hasn’t.)
Rather, Hudson’s ruling is entirely about what the federal government can and cannot do.
The federal government argues the Constitution gives Congress the power to regulate interstate commerce. That’s true. The government further argues that because everything Americans do (or don’t do) somehow affects interstate commerce, the government can regulate virtually anything. That is not true — although the courts have over the past 80 years or so tortured their reading of the Constitution in an effort to make it so.
“Neither the Supreme Court nor any federal circuit court of appeals has extended Commerce Clause power to compel an individual to involuntarily enter the stream of commerce by purchasing a commodity in the private market,” Hudson wrote in his 42-page decision.
In short, the Commerce Clause does not give Congress a blank check to enact any legislation it sees fit, however well-intended or “progressive.” The Constitution places limits on what government can do. The framers, in their hard-won wisdom, recognized although the United States needed a strong, central government to survive and flourish in a hostile world, the government’s powers must be “few and defined.”
Mandating the individual purchase of health care is simply a far cry from the original understanding of the federal government’s role. If Judge Hudson’s ruling accomplishes anything, it may be to help reawaken Americans to that proper understanding in the face of a government that seems to have forgotten it altogether.
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RedBlueAmerica columnists Joel Mathis and Ben Boychuk are distributed by Scripps Howard News Service. Boychuk (bboychuk@heartland.irg) and Mathis (joelmathis@gmail.com) blog regularly at www.somewhatreasonable.com and joelmathis.blogspot.com.
john smithson posted at 3:39 pm on Thu, Dec 16, 2010.
Sorry Joel. Regardless whoever did or did not shout out in favor of or against proposals in the past does not simply mean Obama's tax is ok. Forcing citizens to pay a tax if they do not make a purchase is unconstitutional. Your argument that Republicans did not shout from the rooftops in the past is neither here nor there. You are wrong. Nice try though.
Accuracy posted at 3:52 pm on Thu, Dec 16, 2010.
Joel Mathis and Ben Boychuk wrote: "If Judge Hudson’s ruling accomplishes anything, it may be to help reawaken Americans to that proper understanding in the face of a government that seems to have forgotten it altogether."
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“What’s next for ObamaCare?”
The White House press secretary said all states ''will move forward in implementing the law,'' regardless of U.S. District Judge Henry E. Hudson's ruling, and says the unconstitutional ruling will have “No practical impact” on ObamaCare.
In addition, the Obama Justice Department is fast-tracking an appeal to the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals and is prepared to use the significant financial resources and the full weight of the federal government.
“No practical impact” on ObamaCare? The unconstitutional ruling/decision gives more momentum for current and incoming Members of Congress to repeal and defund the ObamaCare law when the new Congress starts in January.
Rich posted at 7:37 pm on Thu, Dec 16, 2010.
Medical care is a personal service. It exists between a doctor and a patient. Interposing insurance over the last couple decades has crippled it's effectiveness and killed too many people already. Interposing government as well is almost genocide. You don't need death panels, they are built into such a system. Interposing a bureaucracy into personal service has only eroded the service and raised it's cost. Interposing a second bureaucracy to sit on the first will further erode the service and immeasurably increase it's cost. Ideally a doctor cannot be forced to ask a non medical authority if he can save someone's life. If he has to, people die before there is an answer. The more he has to ask, the more answers he has to get, the more people die. Legal or not, Obamacare is just genocide under another name.
Dale Whiting posted at 9:39 pm on Thu, Dec 16, 2010.
All three of you guys are nuts! The individual mandate was the compromise needed to get insurance industry support behind universal healthcare where pre-eixsting conditions could not be used to deny coverage. Insurance companies needed full participation in order to pay for loosing the opportunity to deny coverage on pre-existing conditions. After all, where they were spending 20% of their gross revenues on denying coverage, it stands to reason and is only logical to understand that the bang for that buck spend was saving them more than they would have spent.
Where Rich decries superimposing government over health care insurance companies who are superimposed over the doctor-patient relationship, does he wish us to repeal both the current healthcare law and Medicare/Medicaid?
Where John calls the individual mandate a tax, does he look at the contributions those of us over 65 pay to Medicare as being taxes, too?
Accuracy, here is the score. If Hudson's ruling stand up on appeal, implementation of the remaining parts will be so costly that the insurance companies will wish that a public option had been implemented. That will lead to moving the public option, the thing they fought, back to center stage.
What's a matter with you guys?
Rich posted at 1:32 am on Fri, Dec 17, 2010.
Nothing that I know is wrong with me. Manic eccentric maybe. I do oppose genocide however, and that's pretty much what Obamacare is. Don't shoot them, just deny them proper medical care, is there a difference? Once medicine is bureaucratized it's genocide, it kills people like a hundred people can't paint a painting. I'm not talking socialized, if the insurance companies and government leave the decisions where they belong, between doctor and patient and just pay, don't really have a problem with it, I'll happily join. Now, the insurance companies get a say and control, add the government getting a say and control and it's just genocide, under any name you want to name it.
As to Medicare in 1965 the government sold me a health insurance policy, said after age 65, my medical care was free. I bought it, paid for it with part of every dollar I've earned since then. They pulled the usual insurance crapola and now it still costs me. So I'm all for ending it and getting my money back from people who didn't deliver the goods. And about that pension I've been paying for since 1959? Well, that's off topic.
wdgnas posted at 6:01 am on Fri, Dec 17, 2010.
rich: Now, the insurance companies get a say and control, add the government getting a say and control and it's just genocide, under any name you want to name it.
i think the insurance companies have had a say in who gets coverage when they deny, deny, deny claims for people that have paid the premiums and then "lost" their coverage...
Dale Whiting posted at 9:20 am on Fri, Dec 17, 2010.
Rich,
wdgnas said it all. To your observation that "Don't shoot them, just deny them proper medical care, is there a difference?" we respond, "Yes, there is a difference!" We have the world's most expensive healthcare system, but one which has several gates restricting competition. First is the gate to new physician "want to be's" who find incurring $150,000 for three years of medical school is too expensive. Then we have Medicaid/Medicare which pretty much mandates how care is to be delivered to their serfs. Then we have big business [read healthcare insurance] dictating who gets coverage and who does not, not based upon need [read Gov. Brewer unfunding organ transplants] but upon who has a job with benefits.
So we stand at a turning point. Do we continue to foster a two sided economy, one side for the rich and one side for the poor, all the while siding partly for those over 65 [if the make it that far] or we look at what most of the rest of the developed world has done to facilitate healthcare?
It's our choice. You got any better ideas? Didn't think so!
Accuracy posted at 10:18 am on Fri, Dec 17, 2010.
The real question is . . “What’s next for ObamaCare?”
Twenty states are challenging President Barack Obama's new healthcare law. They made their case before U.S. District Judge Roger Vinson in Pensacola, Fla. on Thursday that ObamaCare reform law was unconstitutional and will expand the government's powers in dangerous and unintended ways.
Florida, Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Colorado, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Louisiana, Michigan, Mississippi, Nebraska, Nevada, North Dakota, South Carolina, South Dakota, Pennsylvania, Texas, Utah and Washington are ensuring a confrontation between state's rights, individual Constitutional protects, and the federal government.
Yes, President Obama has signed into law a health care takeover that is not permitted by the U.S. Constitution.
Both, U.S. District Judge Henry Hudson case in Virginia and U.S. District Judge Roger Vinson case in Florida are likely to end up before the U.S. Supreme Court.
Rich posted at 10:37 am on Fri, Dec 17, 2010.
Better idea? Certainly. Return medical care to the doctor, pay the doctor for it. Outlaw all but major medical insurance, no 'health' insurance, and keep it a private matter between doctor and patient, no government interference. Can't afford it? Actually doctors will make it affordable or go bankrupt. Health insurance has artificially inflated costs. Medical billing used to be a receptionist on a pegboard system, now it's a four person department of specialists in insurance. The tail to teeth in medicine is an absurdity and that has nothing to do with rich and poor, it has to do with carrying a bureaucracy on the back of a personal service, and adding a bureaucracy to the existing bureaucracy is just brain dead. It adds to the problem rather than solves it. And may even be illegal, but even if it isn't, it's criminally stupid and very close to genocide. Let's hope for illegal.
Dale Whiting posted at 8:22 am on Mon, Dec 20, 2010.
Now you're talking, Rich.
Clearly we need to go one way or the other. Conservatives can advocate going the way you outline above, taking down not only recent healthcare reform, but also Medicare, Medicaid, CHIPS [or whatever the acronym is] and we can go back to house calls and pennicillin shots at $25 per pop. Or we can go the Liberal way, the way most of the rest of the industrialized and post-industrialized world has gone, towards true universal healthcare.
Personally, I've yet to decide which is best. But at least Rich and I have laid out the choices for the rest of you goons.
Rich, are you ready for the two of us to take on deficit spending? We've pretty much covered the topics of Islamophobia and Healthcare!