Friday the Federal Appeals Court in Florida ruled 2-1 that individuals cannot be required under federal law to purchase health insurance, or be financially penalized. The requirement is part of Obamacare.
To me, that's just common sense, supported by our Constitution (Imagine if everyone was required by the government to purchase a gun for civil defense! How far would that get?).
Here is the WSJ editorial the past weekend lauding the decision and then a column by E.J. Dionne Jr., praising the dissenting judge.
The 11th Circuit Court of Appeals cites those prophetic words in its decision yesterday finding President Obama's individual health-care mandate unconstitutional, and they do seem more relevant than ever. The 2-1 opinion is another landmark in restoring the government of limited and enumerated powers that the Framers envisioned.
In the exhaustive and rigorous opinion finding for a group of 26 states led by Florida, Judges Frank Hall and Joel Dubina write that the seven words in the Commerce Clause—"to regulate Commerce . . . among the several States"—have "spawned a 200-year debate over the permissible scope of this enumerated power." Even amid this argument, they write, the individual mandate stands out, which starting in 2014 will require everyone to buy health insurance or else pay a penalty.
That is "breathtaking in its expansive scope," the court wrote. "The government's position amounts to an argument that the mere fact of an individual's existence substantially affects interstate commerce, and therefore Congress may regulate them at every point of their life. This theory affords no limiting principles in which to confine Congress's enumerated power."
In other words, if the government can impose this kind of "economic mandate"—if it can force individuals to enter contracts with private companies "from birth to death"—there are no longer limits on what it cannot do. "These types of purchasing decisions are legion," Judges Hall and Dubina write.
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It is a measure of ObamaCare's overreach that throughout this history, the government has never claimed a power like the individual mandate. "Even in the face of a Great Depression, a World War, a Cold War, recessions, oil shocks, inflation, and unemployment, Congress never sought to require the purchase of wheat or war bonds, force a higher savings rate or greater consumption of American goods, or require every American to purchase a more fuel efficient vehicle," the majority writes.
Now no one is more of a knee-jerk supporter of whatever position the Democratic Party takes then EJ Dionne, Jr. Here's his column. I report you decide. --
A brilliant dissent in the health care ruling
Rather than going on about what’s wrong with the 11th Circuit’s ruling, I’d prefer to quote part of the powerful dissent offered by Judge Stanley Marcus. He made perfectly clear why, in gutting the health care law, the 11th Circuit majority reached far beyond its power. Here’s the core of Marcus’ argument:
... In the process of striking down the mandate, the majority has ignored many years of Commerce Clause doctrine developed by the Supreme Court. It has ignored the broad power of Congress, in the words of Chief Justice Marshall, “to prescribe the rule by which commerce is to be governed.” It has ignored the undeniable fact that Congress’ commerce power has grown exponentially over the past two centuries, and is now generally accepted as having afforded Congress the authority to create rules regulating large areas of our national economy. It has ignored the Supreme Court’s expansive reading of the Commerce Clause that has provided the very foundation on which Congress already extensively regulates both health insurance and health care services. And it has ignored the long-accepted instruction that we review the constitutionality of an exercise of commerce power not through the lens of formal, categorical distinctions, but rather through a pragmatic one, recognizing, as Justice Holmes put it over one hundred years ago, that “commerce among the states is not a technical legal conception, but a practical one, drawn from the course of business.”
The approach taken by the majority has also disregarded the powerful admonitions that acts of Congress are to be examined with a heavy presumption of constitutionality, that the task at hand must be approached with caution, restraint, and great humility, and that we may not lightly conclude that an act of Congress exceeds its enumerated powers. ...
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