“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.
>> “ I’ll grant that everyone will need healthcare at some point” <<
.
Then you’re granting something that is not in evidence, and is definitely not true.
Stay clear of doctors, drugs, sugar and most seed oils, and you’ll do just fine.