As freedom lovers know, the case pitting the DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES against FLORIDA, ET AL is simply one more stage on the road to socializing the means of health-care production. Americans already labor under, as one wag put it, “a seeming patchwork of indemnity insurance arrangements, managed care, private payment, and charity.”
Increasing interventionism is always accompanied by the use of brute force, the legitimacy of which the nation’s Supreme Politburo Of Proctologists (the SCOTUS) is currently debating.
Not surprisingly, “the four jurists appointed by Democratic presidents — Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan — seemed sympathetic to the government’s defense of the [ObamaCare], at times offering Solicitor General Donald Verrilli helpful answers to their colleagues’ questions,” reports the National Journal’s Margot Sanger-Katz. “Justices Samuel Alito and Antonin Scalia — who had been considered by some Court watchers to be in play — seemed to stand firmly with the challengers.”
Equally predictable: “Chief Justice John Roberts, whose questions suggested a discomfort with the health care law, … also defended the government’s argument at times.”
Both Kennedy and Roberts will probably find a way to make ObamaCare palatable by papering over arguments against it. While they “seemed particularly concerned about the question of whether upholding this law would mean that Congress’s authority to pass regulation would be virtually unbounded, [t]hey repeatedly asked Verrilli to identify a limiting principle that would allow this mandate to go forward without opening the door to requirements to purchase other products.” [NJ]
The gist of the case being argued:
The 26 states challenging the mandate say it is an unprecedented demand, one that regulates economic “inactivity” and forces people into purchasing a product they do not want. If the government can compel the purchase of health insurance, they argue, then nearly any sort of purchase mandate could also be permitted. The administration counters that there’s basically no avoiding the health care market: Everyone needs health care at some time, often with little warning or financial preparation. Health insurance is not a standalone product, but merely a means of regulating the financing of that activity, it says
[NJ]
The elaborate public works sprung from the General Welfare and Interstate Commerce Clauses are unconstitutional. However, despite the fact that there is no warrant in the Constitution for most of what the Federal Frankenstein does, the Proctologists will find a way around what is already a dead-letter document.