Health Care Reform Unconstitutional
Economics, Health Care August 22nd. 2009, 8:12amAt least according to these lawyer-type guys, Congress lacks the power to mandate insurance purchases.
Good! I had already resolved that I would disobey the law, and that I would further not pay the penalties and fines, etc. A law repugnant to the Constitution is void and I am not obliged to obey it.
August 22nd, 2009 at 10:00 am
Hope you can link in with a group of like-minded individuals willing to contest it in the courts. If I hear of anyone I’ll let you know.
August 22nd, 2009 at 3:11 pm
Well, I’m hoping we don’t have to put it to the test!
August 22nd, 2009 at 9:24 pm
Eh. Congress clearly has the power to raise everyone’s taxes enough to reflect the cost of the public option. And I am not aware of a theory that would bar Congress from granting a tax refund, capped at the cost of the premiums for the public option, for expenditures on health insurance. People who didn’t want to be forced into buying health insurance wouldn’t have to, just as states don’t have to implement the federal highway policies. But they’d lose the tax advantages of complying.
I’m open to the idea of articulating a basis for limiting Congress’s exercise of power through the tax-and-refund method. But my sense is that libertarian constitutional interpretation has gone in and out of style. Courts were more skeptical of Congressional action up until the Great Depression, and early on some of FDR’s programs were stricken as exceeding federal authority. As the Depression worsened and then blossomed into WWII, courts became more deferential to Congressional and Executive actions. I sense this trend continued basically until Watergate. Skepticism made something of a comeback thereafter, but I suspect 9/11 has made courts more deferential again.
In any event, I wouldn’t put a lot of stock on the idea that today’s courts would take a lot of guidance from a 1920s-era decision about the scope of federal powers.