Posted on 08/12/2011 10:43:48 AM PDT by americanophile
(Reuters) - An appeals court ruled on Friday that President Barack Obama's healthcare law requiring Americans to buy healthcare insurance or face a penalty was unconstitutional, a blow to the White House.
The Appeals Court for the 11th Circuit, based in Atlanta, found that Congress exceeded its authority by requiring Americans to buy coverage, but also ruled that the rest of the wide-ranging law could remain in effect.
The legality of the so-called individual mandate, a cornerstone of the healthcare law, is widely expected to be decided by the U.S. Supreme Court. The Obama administration has defended the provision as constitutional.
(Excerpt) Read more at reuters.com ...
Just mentioned on Rush — great news!
Regardless of what happens, it will end up at the SCOTUS and it will all eventually depend on ONE MAN and which side of the bed he wakes up in (Justice Kennedy).
Obama really has had a terrible few weeks.
True. It’s an amazing reality. Unless, God forbid, he should drop dead between now and then, leaving Obama with a key appointment.
The best medical system the globe has to offer may yet be saved.
This needs to be heard in October and ruled on in November — so that doesn’t happen!
This needs to be heard in October and ruled on in November — so that doesn’t happen!
Well, it’s not a duplicate, but it’s the same issue.
I agree. Swing vote Kennedy is the final arbiter on all legislative policy issues that come up for review in the Supreme Court. As such he may be the single most important legislator, I mean, judge in the US.
Point conceded, but still best to have a single thread to aggregate comments, IMHO.
The concept of the individual federal mandate is perhaps the most dangerous in our lifetimes. It would completely eviscerate the Constitution.
Ya, okay...I generally agree.
Still, frustrating to not be first, I’ve been minutes or seconds late to the party dozens of times...
Striking down the individual mandate still leaves a terrible, tyrannical law.
Because Obamacare authorizes the bureaucrats to dictate the terms and benefits of all health insurance policies that may be offered to the public, your choice is essentially to go without health insurance entirely (which the 11th Circuit now says you can do) or buy a policy that is a government-designed policy.
The government-designed policy allows the government to decide which treatments may be paid for and which may not. Old white person who lived your life responsibly and conservatively? No treatments for you, too expensive. Young homosexual who needs expensive AIDS drugs because they had thousands of anonymous sexual encounters in bathhouses? Yes, this gets paid because that is a government-approved victim group with higher status.
Since Congress did not include a severability clause and it is impossible to say how Congress would have structured the law if it could not include the individual mandate, the entire law should have been struck down.
We first conclude that the Act’s Medicaid expansion is constitutional.
Existing Supreme Court precedent does not establish that Congress’s inducements
are unconstitutionally coercive, especially when the federal government will bear
nearly all the costs of the program’s amplified enrollments.
Next, the individual mandate was enacted as a regulatory penalty, not a
revenue-raising tax, and cannot be sustained as an exercise of Congress’s power
under the Taxing and Spending Clause. The mandate is denominated as a penalty in
the Act itself, and the legislative history and relevant case law confirm this reading
of its function.
Further, the individual mandate exceeds Congress’s enumerated commerce
power and is unconstitutional. This economic mandate represents a wholly novel
and potentially unbounded assertion of congressional authority: the ability to
compel Americans to purchase an expensive health insurance product they have
elected not to buy, and to make them re-purchase that insurance product every
month for their entire lives. We have not found any generally applicable, judicially
enforceable limiting principle that would permit us to uphold the mandate without
obliterating the boundaries inherent in the system of enumerated congressional
powers. “Uniqueness” is not a constitutional principle in any antecedent Supreme
Court decision. The individual mandate also finds no refuge in the aggregation doctrine, for decisions to abstain from the purchase of a product or service,
whatever their cumulative effect, lack a sufficient nexus to commerce.145
The individual mandate, however, can be severed from the remainder of the
Act’s myriad reforms. The presumption of severability is rooted in notions of
judicial restraint and respect for the separation of powers in our constitutional
system. The Act’s other provisions remain legally operative after the mandate’s
excision, and the high burden needed under Supreme Court precedent to rebut the
presumption of severability has not been met.
Accordingly, we affirm in part and reverse in part the judgment of the district
court.
AFFIRMED in part and REVERSED in part.
145Our respected dissenting colleague says that the majority: (1) “has ignored the broad
power of Congress”; (2) “has ignored the Supreme Court’s expansive reading of the Commerce
Clause”; (3) “presume[s] to sit as a superlegislature”; (4) “misapprehends the role of a reviewing
court”; and (5) ignores that “as nonelected judicial officers, we are not afforded the opportunity
to rewrite statutes we don’t like.” See Dissenting Op. at 208–209, 243. We do not respond to
these contentions, especially given (1) our extensive and exceedingly careful review of the Act,
Supreme Court precedent, and the parties’ arguments, and (2) our holding that the Act, despite
significant challenges to this massive and sweeping federal regulation and spending, falls within
the ambit and prerogative of Congress’s broad commerce power, except for one section, §
5000A. We do, however, refuse to abdicate our constitutional duty when Congress has acted
beyond its enumerated Commerce Clause power in mandating that Americans, from cradle to
grave, purchase an insurance product from a private company.
AFFIRMED in part and REVERSED in part.
Repeal ObamaCommieCare!!
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