Federal Judge Roger Vinson issues an exhaustive 78-page ruling which states the obvious - that the ability to force American citizens to buy a product they may or may not wish to own appears nowhere among the enumerated powers granted to the federal government by the U.S. Constitution:
"'Regardless of how laudable its attempts may have been to accomplish these goals in passing the Act, Congress must operate within the bounds established by the Constitution,' the judge ruled."
And since the individual mandate to purchase insurance (the inseverable "linchpin" of this Ponzi scheme) is unlawful, the entire bill is null and void, reasons Judge Vinson.
The Obama Administration is naturally immediately appealing this ruling. Let 'em. The quicker this farce of a law gets up to the Supreme Court the quicker it will be struck down once and for all.
UPDATE: pdf of full ruling is here. On first glance, Judge Vinson makes a couple of very interesting (and accurate) observations:
"There is quite literally no decision that, in the natural course of events, does not have an economic impact of some sort. The decisions of whether and when (or not) to buy a house, a car, a television, a dinner, or even a morning cup of coffee also have a financial impact that --- when aggregated with similar economic decisions --- affect the price of that particular product or service and have a substantial effect on interstate commerce. To be sure, it is not difficult to identify an economic decision that has a cumulatively substantial effect on interstate commerce; rather, the difficult task is to find a decision that does not,"
Translation: Just as the government can't make a person buy lots of coffee, a new TV or a bigger house in order to positively influence interstate commerce, they also can't make someone purchase health insurance, especially if pretty much the only reason for doing so is to force people to provide a benefit to others.
"It would be a radical departure from existing case law to hold that Congress can regulate inactivity under the Commerce Clause," (emphasis ours)
Exactly.
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2 comments:
I'm not so sure the Supreme Court will rule against this unconstitutional piece of garbage. They couldn't figure out "shall not be infringed" in Heller.
As to how such a development would relate to healthcare services, if you make it too easy for people to access healthcare and too difficult for insurance companies to provide it, you will at the very least, cause a shortage of services. Without the regular balancing mechanism of price and profit, such needing to be free from government interference, you will see those in power assigning the scarce amount of services to selected groups.
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