Why Obama's Healthcare Law is Constitutional

eupraxsophy:

As much as I advocate for a universal healthcare system, my studies of law suggested that the current healthcare law being debated in the Supreme Court wouldn’t pass constitutional muster. Apparently, though, it’s not that clear cut: there are stronger argument in favor of “Obamacare’s” constitutionality than even supporters believe:

Congress’s power to do something about these free-riders is strongly supported by precedent, on at least three independent theories. First, under the necessary and proper clause, Congress may pass laws that are not expressly authorized by the Constitution’s enumerated powers but that would be a “convenient” means to further the exercise of such a power. No one disputes that Congress has the authority to protect people with pre-existing conditions. The individual mandate is not only convenient but essential to make that protection work.

Second, like growing wheat, the decision to “self-insure” is an economic decision that, when aggregated, inevitably shifts costs to others and affects interstate commerce, and therefore may be regulated under the commerce clause. The law’s challengers concede that Congress could require people to pay for their healthcare with insurance at the point of consumption, as that would be a direct regulation of commerce. But if Congress can do that, there is no sensible principle that would bar it from doing so in advance, given the inevitability that we will all need healthcare.

Finally, Congress has the power to tax for the general welfare and need not tie its taxing provisions to any other enumerated power. As those who fail to purchase health insurance need only pay more income tax, the new law is an exercise of the taxing power and would be valid even if it were not authorized by the necessary and proper or commerce clauses.

The challengers seek to mask the weakness in their arguments by clothing them in the impassioned rhetoric of liberty. But they dare not actually argue that the ACA violates due process, the Constitution’s central protection of liberty. As noted above, that line of argument has been discredited since the New Deal. There is no dispute that states, which have broad authority to regulate in their citizens’ interest, could impose an individual mandate without running afoul of the Constitution. Massachusetts has already done so. Despite the rhetoric, then, the challengers’ argument is not really about the liberty to be free of regulation but about whether states or the federal government should have the power to regulate insurance. Viewed that way, there is simply no reason under the sun, much less in the Constitution, why the nationally integrated insurance market should be subject to regulation only by the individual states. It’s a matter of national interest, most appropriately addressed by Congress. Absent a revolution in constitutional jurisprudence, the Supreme Court should so rule.

Click the link to see some of the other arguments presumably favoring the Healthcare Act.