Even More on Obamacare

From the WSJ - "Solicitor General Donald Verrilli, representing the government, struggled to outline a workable principle that would limit the ability of Congress to require people to make other kinds of purchases in the future."

Exactly. 

It's not that Mr. Verrilli struggled with the words, or had trouble communicating his ideas about a limit.  The problem is that there would be no limit on federal power if Congress can coerce you into health insurance.

More on Obamacare

This week, your liberty is on trial at the Supreme Court.  The Court has scheduled three days of hearings to determine if Washington has the constitutional prerogative to basically rule your life.  Today, the Supremes heard arguments as to whether the provision in the law for not buying healthcare insurance amounts to a tax or a penalty.  If it’s a tax, then generally speaking, you cannot file suit until the tax is collected, which in this case is 2014.  That’s when the mandate kicks in.  This would preclude the court from issuing an opinion until that after that date.  Oddly enough, both sides agree that the Court should rule on the merits now, and that the penalty isn’t a tax.  So, to argue the other side, the Supreme Court booked the services of another lawyer to argue a side neither side agrees with.  As I said, odd.

George Will brought up an interesting point today in his Washington Post column.  The Institute for Justice, like several other “think tanks”, submitted an amicus brief opposing Obamacare on the grounds that it violates contract law.  The IJ said that in order for contracts to be valid, they must be entered into voluntarily.  For if an individual can be coerced into entering into a contract, liberty has been relegated to an antiquated notion.  And Obamacare does just that.  Your mere existence requires that you carry health insurance.  Read the whole column here.

Tomorrow is the big day.  That’s when arguments about the individual mandate begin.  Wish I were there!

On the latest Obamacare Mandate

Much has been said regarding the latest Health & Human Services edict compelling nearly all insurance plans to cover birth control, the morning-after pill, and abortion services.  While this is certainly outrageous, I haven’t heard many complain about the real underlying issue, which is this:  Our government, specifically the President of the United States (one man), has ordered that a private company sell a specific kind of product.  Not only that, but (nearly) all health plans must provide this product to women free of charge.  Of course nothing is free, as companies will be forced to increase premiums to pay for this “free” service.

Let’s boil this down.  The President mandated that all health plans provide free contraceptives to women.

Are we living in a constitutional republican form of government or a dictatorship?  I’m afraid that edicts like this one are just the tip of the iceberg.

On Obamacare: The Individual Mandate

The Cato Institute filed its last Amici brief with the Supreme Court this week in advance of the upcoming oral arguments.    Here are some snippets:

We believe that “the Court either should stop saying that there is a meaningful limit on Congress’s power or prove that it is so.”

-----------------------

“The Constitution does not permit Congress to conscript citizens into economic transactions to remedy the admitted shortcomings—which the government usually terms “necessities”—of a hastily assembled piece of legislation.”

-----------------------

“Nor has Congress ever before imposed on everyone a civil penalty for declining to participate in the market.”

----------------------

“Even in Wickard v. Filburn, 317 U.S. 111 (1942), the federal government claimed “merely” the power to regulate what farmers grew, not to mandate that people become farmers, much less to force people to purchase farm products.4 Even if not purchasing health insurance is considered an “economic activity”—which of course would mean that every aspect of human life is economic activity—there is no constitutional warrant for Congress to force Americans to enter the market-place to buy a particular good or service.”

----------------------

“Conversely, non-economic activity (or, as in this case, inactivity) cannot be regulated merely because it affects interstate commerce through a “causal chain,” or has, in the aggregate, “substantial effects on employment, production, transit, or consumption.”

Nine robed men and women will soon decide whether or not our elected representatives can force us into purchasing a private good.  No other case is more important to our liberty or fundamental to our natural and God-given right to decide when to engage in trade.  For if the masses can be conscripted into economic commerce, this power knows no limit.

You can read the whole brief here.