Posted on 11/26/2010 10:38:48 PM PST by Islander7
WASHINGTON — As the Obama administration presses ahead with the health care law, officials are bracing for the possibility that a federal judge in Virginia will soon reject its central provision as unconstitutional and, in the worst case for the White House, halt its enforcement until higher courts can rule.
The judge, Henry E. Hudson of Federal District Court in Richmond, has promised to rule by the end of the year on the constitutionality of the law’s requirement that most Americans obtain insurance, which does not take effect until 2014.
Although administration officials remain confident that it is constitutionally valid to force people to obtain health insurance, they also acknowledge that Judge Hudson’s preliminary opinions and comments could presage the first ruling against the law.
“He’s asked a number of questions that express skepticism,” said one administration official who is examining whether a ruling against part of the law would raise questions about whether other provisions would automatically collapse. “We have been trying to think through that set of questions,” said the official, who insisted on anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the case freely.
(Excerpt) Read more at patdollard.com ...
“We are not operating under the assumption that those two judges are inevitably going to rule against us,” the administration official said. “But of course we’re planning for the possibility that judges will reach different conclusions.”
The novel question before the courts is whether the government can require citizens to buy a commercial product like health insurance. Because the Supreme Court has said the commerce clause of the Constitution allows Congress to regulate “activities that substantially affect interstate commerce,” the judges must decide whether the failure to obtain insurance can be defined as an “activity.”
Thank you judge Henry E. Hudson in my home town.
I surely hope the turnout to decline/refuse to buy the mandated insurance, if and when it comes about, is better than the few that have defied Massachusetts.
Regulating an activity related to interstate commerce is not the same as forcing people to buy things.
Obamacare is bad law, no matter how one looks at it.
Agreed. I told a 'liberal' (she's actually more of a libertarian, but don't tell her, she totally confused) friend the same thing. She simply could not imagine that 0bama signed any legislation that could possibly be unconstitutional. She played the 'constitutional scholar' card. I'm still patiently working to educate her. It's a tedious endeavor.
I don’t dare expect judges to make a correct decision, I don’t care what leaks.
It’s odd that the law was written such that it requires purchase and imposes a penalty for failure. They are twisting the commerce clause all out of shape this way.
They could have avoided this if they had set a minimum income tax equal to the “penalty” amount, and then issued a “tax credit” for having a qualifying health insurance plan.
That would have made it a tax issue similar to having kids. If you don’t have children, you pay an extra $1500/yr per child in income tax compared to somebody that has kids because they get the child tax credits and you don’t — even though your incomes are identical.
Ask your friend why the “constitutional scholar” is no longer a member of the Illinois Bar.
I don’t see anywhere in the Constitution where Congress can legally order people to buy a good or service. That is not among its enumerated powers. And if Congress can do this, it can do anything - I mean anything lawmakers can dream up.
Keep voting that one back in!
“Agreed. I told a ‘liberal’ (she’s actually more of a libertarian, but don’t tell her, she totally confused) friend the same thing.”
Some libertarians are not all that different from liberals. I used to argue with one on Usenet. He didn’t believe in big government, but was otherwise left-of-center on religion, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and social issues.
Libertarians and liberals are NOT the same. Libertarians are anti-statist. Liberals believe government is the solution to all our problems.
They were in too much of a hurry-- they had to pass it to find out what was in it.
And don't forget, they left out sever-ability; if one part is found wanting, the whole goddamn mess goes down in flames. It's a beautiful thing.
Right.... they were in such a hurry to jam through Obamacare, they might save Republicans the work of having to repeal it. If its unconstitutional, it was all for nothing. Thanks for your stupidity, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid!
Exactly my point.
Constitutionally they can’t force people to have kids, either, but they can effectively penalize those people that do *not* have kids by denying them tax credits that they give to others that do choose to have kids.
In both cases, they are doing social engineering — rewarding activity they approve of and penalizing those who refuse to participate in that activity. They have always gotten away with it in the case of child tax exemptions and credits. They could have gotten away with it again in the tax code with “qualifying health insurance” credits. I’m surprised they didn’t take that route and avoided the protests about “forcing purchase” of health insurance.
As I said, this guy I mentioned was anti-statist, but a liberal on social issues and things like that. I guess some people have no exact label that can be applied to them.
They know their support base is too dense to comprehend the concept.
You just showed why we need get rid of the income tax. Not only to stop wealth redistribution but to keep the government from “social engineering” by using taxes to reward and punish favored and disfavored activities. But that’s a subject for another thread.
They didn’t do that because the IRS is as popular as Typhoid Mary. There you have it.
No, that’s why we need to make illegal all tax credits, deductions, and exemptions from any tax system. A “Tax Code” should not be thousands of pages (or even twenty pages) long — it should be a single paragraph. A flat income tax would be fine if it was simply 10% of every dollar of income — without regard to your marital status, number of children, where you get your income, how much income you have, or how you spend your income. The lesson to learn from the previous century of the income tax is the folly of TINKERING — not that an income tax is inherently unworkable, but that tinkering is a slippery slope that results in the mess we have now.
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