Government Defends Individual Health Insurance Mandate

Again, the Commerce Clause to control citizens, even in their homes!

5-17-2010 National:

From Constitutional Law Professor's Blog

The Justice Department last week filed its first defense of the new health insurance mandate in federal court. The government responded to the plaintiffs' motion for a preliminary injunction in Thomas More Law Center, et al. v. Obama in the Eastern District of Michigan, a case filed just after President Obama signed into law the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (the health care reform act), which includes the mandate.

Plaintiffs filed their motion and brief on April 5, arguing that Congress lacked authority under the Commerce Clause to require individuals to purchase health insurance. The arguments are by now all too familiar; from the plaintiffs' brief:

The Act does not even pretend to fit within any of the Court's previous Commerce Clause rulings. The Individual Mandate attaches to a legal resident of the United States who chooses to sit at home and do nothing. This resident is, quite literally, merely existing. He or she is neither engaged in economic activity nor in any other activity that would bring him or her within the reach of even a legitimate regulatory scheme. . . . In this case, we have neither economics nor activities.
. . .
If the Act is understood to fall within Congress' Commerce Clause authority, the federal government will have the absolute and unfettered power to create complex regulatory schemes to fix every perceived problem imaginable and to do so by ordering private citizens to engage in affirmative acts, under penalty of law, such as taking vitamins, losing weight, joining health clubs, buying a GMC truck, or purchasing an AIG insurance policy, among others. The term "Nanny State" does not even begin to describe what we will have wrought if in fact the Health Care Reform Act falls within any imaginable governmental authority. To be sure, George Orwell's 1984 will be just the primer for our new civics.

For the remainder of this excellent post: by Constitutional Law Professor's Blog