Author: Mark A. Hall Publisher: ISBN: Category : Languages : en Pages : 0
Book Description
Many proposals to reform health care finance and delivery require individuals or private employers to pay for private health insurance. This paper analyzes the constitutionality of such proposals. A direct and unconditional federal requirement for an individual to transfer money to a private party for health or economic purposes seems to be unprecedented. Thus, an individual (or employer) mandate to purchase private health insurance raises several possible constitutional issues. Although the Constitution does not confer plenary powers over public welfare like those possessed by the states, a mandate to purchase health insurance appears to fall fairly readily within the current breadth of Congress's power to regulate interstate commerce. Also, if the sole means used to enforce compulsory insurance is the federal tax system, then this requirement would easily fall within Congress's broad powers over taxation. Moreover, under Congress's broad power to spend to promote the general welfare, it could require states to adopt an insurance mandate as a condition for receiving health-related federal funding. There are no plausible federalism objections to any of this as long as state and local governments are not required to purchase insurance for their own employees, but even that requirement appears to be consistent with current Supreme Court precedents. Regarding individual liberties, there is no support in Supreme Court decisions for a Constitutional objection based on religious liberty, but a statutory objection might be made under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA). Also, a plausible challenge might be made under the Takings Clause, but such a challenge is not likely to succeed. There is no solid precedent that applies the Takings Clause to mandated purchases of any kind, and several inconsistent precedents. Moreover, a Takings Clause challenge could easily be avoided by framing the mandate as a taxation provision (i.e., simply a tax benefit for complying or a tax levy for not complying). These major contours of Constitutional jurisprudence appear to be secure. Still, challenges to some versions of compulsory health insurance would be possible. The safest versions - those least susceptible to challenge - would be mandates that: 1) contain explicit findings about effects on and in interstate commerce; or 2) are conditioned on federal spending or federal taxation; and 3) avoid state and local government employers; and 4) provide a religious exemption or exception from RFRA.
Author: Matthew R. Hracho Publisher: ISBN: Category : Languages : en Pages : 0
Book Description
On March 23, 2010, President Obama signed comprehensive health care legislation into law. Although historic, attorneys general from twelve states have filed suit against the federal government challenging the constitutionality of the bill. Specifically, the constitutional challenges focus on the individual health insurance mandate included in the bill. The mandate requires that all citizens have health insurance by 2014 or pay a fine. This Comment analyzes the congressional powers provided by the United States Constitution and the Supreme Court's interpretation of those powers to show why the individual health insurance mandate is unconstitutional.
Author: Jack Painter Publisher: ISBN: Category : Languages : en Pages : 0
Book Description
The Supreme Court is about to hear a case of great legal and political importance. At issue is the constitutionality of the so-called “individual mandate” in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, which requires most Americans to purchase health insurance starting in 2014 or pay a monetary penalty.The question is whether Congress exceeded its Constitutional power to regulate “Commerce...among the several States” (i.e., regulate interstate commerce) and to make laws “necessary and proper” to carry into effect that power. It's unlikely the Obama Administration can justify the individual mandate as a regulation of interstate commerce. How can the failure to purchase health insurance in itself be considered commerce, let alone interstate commerce? If that is interstate commerce, what can't Congress force us to purchase? For that reason, the outcome of the case will likely turn on whether the individual mandate is both “necessary” and “proper” to carry into effect Congress's power to regulate interstate commerce. To succeed on the “necessary” test, the Obama Administration must make constitutional arguments that don't have any logical limits and therefore give Congress vast powers over our lives, and this undermines its ability to show that the individual mandate also meets the “proper” test, which requires that it be consistent with “the letter and spirit of the constitution.” On its face, the individual mandate fails the "proper" test. It abandons the long-standing legal principle that legally binding contracts require mutual assent and cannot be coerced. This crosses a line the federal government has never crossed and effectively tramples on “The powers...reserved...to the people” under the Tenth Amendment. It is inconsistent with the fundamental concept of self-ownership that underlies the theory of natural rights in the Declaration of Independence - the idea that we own ourselves and, therefore, have the right to be left alone as long as we honor the equal right of others to be left alone. Beyond that, the Administration's expansive view of the commerce power creates a sea of federal power limited only by islands of individual rights (and limits on using the commerce power to regulate non-economic activity), and that is inconsistent with the letter and spirit of the Constitution: It imposes virtually the same limits on federal and state power and, therefore, effectively gives the federal government the same “police powers” as the states. It puts liberty at risk by relying entirely on individual rights to protect us against things like mandated doctor visits and exercise. For example, the Supreme Court has found an unenumerated “right to liberty” only where there is no harm to others. The courts could easily decide that skipping annual physicals or living a sedentary life harms others by raising medical costs for some and insurance premiums for all. The Administration makes the following arguments to allay concerns about the threat to liberty its theories pose, but those arguments don't stand up to scrutiny: The government imposes the equivalent of mandates all the time. Economic mandates are no more intrusive than regulations or prohibitions of chosen activity. Congress can use its taxing power to achieve the same ends, so using the commerce power is permitted. We can rely on the political process to protect our liberty.
Author: Remi Aston Publisher: Nova Science Publishers ISBN: 9781624171475 Category : Constitutional law Languages : en Pages : 0
Book Description
As part of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA), as amended, Congress enacted the "individual mandate", which requires certain individuals to have a minimum level of health insurance. Individuals who fail to do so may be subject to a monetary penalty, administered through the tax code. Prior to ACA, Congress had never required individuals to buy health insurance, and there had been significant debate over whether the individual mandate was within the scope of Congress's legislative powers. This book provides an overview of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care ACT (ACA), the Supreme Court and the constitutionality of the "individual mandate".
Author: Nathaniel Persily Publisher: Oxford University Press ISBN: 0199354413 Category : Law Languages : en Pages : 401
Book Description
The Supreme Court's decision in the Health Care Case, NFIB v. Sebelius, gripped the nation's attention during the spring of 2012. Like the legislative battle leading to adoption of ?Obamacare?, the litigation took many unexpected twists and turns, culminating in a surprising, fractured and confusing decision from the Supreme Court. This volume gathers together reactions to the decision from an ideologically diverse selection of the nation's leading scholars of constitutional, administrative, and health law.
Author: Andrew Koppelman Publisher: Oxford University Press ISBN: 0199970033 Category : Law Languages : en Pages : 195
Book Description
Chief Justice John Roberts stunned the nation by upholding the Affordable Care Act--more commonly known as Obamacare. But legal experts observed that the decision might prove a strategic defeat for progressives. Roberts grounded his decision on Congress's power to tax. He dismissed the claim that it is allowed under the Constitution's commerce clause, which has been the basis of virtually all federal regulation--now thrown in doubt. In The Tough Luck Constitution and the Assault on Health Care Reform, Andrew Koppelman explains how the Court's conservatives embraced the arguments of a fringe libertarian legal movement bent on eviscerating the modern social welfare state. They instead advocate what Koppelman calls a "tough luck" philosophy: if you fall on hard times, too bad for you. He argues that the rule they proposed--that the government can't make citizens buy things--has nothing to do with the Constitution, and that it is in fact useless to stop real abuses of power, as it was tailor-made to block this one law after its opponents had lost in the legislature. He goes on to dismantle the high court's construction of the commerce clause, arguing that it almost crippled America's ability to reverse rising health-care costs and shrinking access. Koppelman also places the Affordable Care Act within a broader historical context. The Constitution was written to increase central power, he notes, after the failure of the Articles of Confederation. The Supreme Court's previous limitations on Congressional power have proved unfortunate: it has struck down anti-lynching laws, civil-rights protections, and declared that child-labor laws would end "all freedom of commerce, and . . . our system of government [would] be practically destroyed." Both somehow survived after the court revisited these precedents. Koppelman notes that the arguments used against Obamacare are radically new--not based on established constitutional principles. Ranging from early constitutional history to potential consequences, this is the definitive postmortem of this landmark case.
Author: Mark A. Hall
Author: Mark A. Hall
Author: Matthew R. Hracho
Author: Jack Painter
Author: Remi Aston
Author: Nathaniel Persily
Author: Ilya Somin
Author: United States. Congress. Senate. Committee on the Judiciary
Author: Andrew Koppelman
Author: United States. Congress. House. Committee on the Judiciary