http://www2.timesdispatch.com/news/rtd-opinion/2010/nov/07/ed-somi07-ar-634809/
The suits focus primarily on challenges to the new law's "individual mandate," which requires most American citizens to purchase a government-approved health insurance plan by 2014 or pay a fine. One of the cases was filed by 20 state governments and the National Federation of Independent Business in a federal court in Florida. Another was initiated by the Commonwealth of Virginia in a federal court in this state, and a third by the Thomas More Law Center in Michigan.
The judges considering the Florida and Virginia cases have both issued rulings rejecting the federal government's motions to dismiss the suits and indicating that the mandate can't be upheld based on current Supreme Court precedent. By contrast, Michigan district Judge George Caram Steeh wrote a decision concluding that the mandate is constitutional. But even he agreed that the case raises an "issue of first impression."
In the most recent of the three rulings, Florida federal District Court Judge Roger Vinson wrote that the government's claim that the mandate is clearly authorized by existing Supreme Court precedent is "not even a close call." He points out that "[t]he power that the individual mandate seeks to harness is simply without prior precedent," because no previous Supreme Court decision ever authorized Congress to force ordinary citizens to buy products they did not want.
An August ruling in the Virginia case by federal District Judge Henry Hudson reached the same conclusion. As Judge Hudson points out, "[n]o reported case from any federal appellate court" has ever ruled that Congress' powers "include the regulation of a person's decision not to purchase a product."
I recommend you read this in its entirety.
I would have two observations here. First, all it takes is one piece of the 2700-page bill to be rendered 'out' by the Supreme Court....and it really starts to screw up the functions of the entire package.
ReplyDeleteSecond, if they allow the package to stand on the merit of requiring people to buy commercial items by government decree...then there's no limit to what they could come up with next. I suspect this will be the one item that will be tossed out. If they'd made it optional...then maybe it'd survive...but that wasn't the intention.