There is no temporal limitation in the Commerce Clause. Everyone subject to this regulation is in or will be in the health care market. They are just being regulated in advance.
Kennedy’s comment about compelling people to enter into commerce in order to regulate commerce was funny.
I was thinking about this today. They're claiming that EVERYONE is in the market. I disagree. I've known people that have never, ever been to a doctor. Born healthy, deal with it if they're sick, and have had zero time in the "market". This mandate, if upheld is decidedly an infringement upon their freedom FROM the medical market or the medical insurance market.
Think Amish.
“There is no temporal limitation in the Commerce Clause. Everyone subject to this regulation is in or will be in the health care market. They are just being regulated in advance.”
What’s most objectionable about this train of thought is not only what you embolden. It’s also the failure to distinguish between the specific market the mandate covers: insurance, and everything else that falls within “the health care market.” I’ll grant that everyone will need healthcare at some point. I’m not very willing to admit everyone will paticipate in what we normally consider to be the healthcare market. If you live in the Ozarks—not to stereotype—perhaps you have cousin Tammy set your broken leg. Tammy’s actions will be economic, in a sense, though won’t in any way count as such to whoever’s measuring the healthcare industry nationwide.
Okay, fine, let’s say everyone will enter the healthcare market as commonly understood. Does it follow that everyone will at some point purchase health insurance? Hell no. They can always pay out of pocket, as ruthlessly gouged as they may be. This lawyer fails to notice that buying healthcare and buying iunsurance are not the same thing. Just because both can be categorized under the heading “healthcare” does not mean you can regulate one as if it’s the other.
And, yes, there is a temporal limitation to the commerce clause. You cannot regulate that which does not yet exist. It would lead to a rip in the space-time continuum, or something.
The problem is they assume every single person needs health care in order to pay for medical bills. Simply not true. There are also groups of people that do not go to hospitals when ill.
by the “regulated in advance” argument,,,
citizens will eventually die.
dying requires medical care.
medical care costs everyone money.
money must be saved.
young people don’t spend money to die.
old peole spend money and then die.
therefore
to save money we must impose a life span age limit.
ps Obama loves you.
IOW a duty to die.