Mr Khan said:
Kasz216 said:
Mr Khan said:
SamuelRSmith said:
Mr Khan said:
Because where in the Constitution is the free market or economic liberty an enumerated power? The commerce clause is clearly there, but in this case there is nothing else in there to oppose the commerce clause. To state that we have a "right" to not be forced to buy anything is therefore false, as far as American jurisprudence should be concerned. The conservative justices will inject ideas of economic libertarianism into American jurisprudence that have no constitutional basis
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First of all, the "free market" is not a thing, it is an absence of a thing. The free market emerges through property rights - with the ability to voluntarily exchange your property. All other economic systems require some kind of forced removal of property by the state. Which means, under the 5th amendment, the Feds cannot take the property without a trial to determine its value. That, there, is an implied protection of the "free market".
Second, you're right about the Commerce clause existing. But, the Commerce clause has been bastardised from it's original intention. This mandate would stray even further from its original intention, and even extend power beyond what the clause has been used for in previous cases.
The argument of the Justices is that this law changes the relationship between the Federal Government and the individual in a very "fundamental" way. The Feds have never claimed (successfully) the ability to force purchase of a good/service before. When the Feds change something "fundamentally", there is a far stronger litmus test that it must pass before it is deemed Constitutional - the Government needs to prove that what it is doing is necessary, that it will work, and that there are no suitable solutions which will not cause this "fundamental" change. This is the point that the swing voter Justice Kennedy put up, he even used the term "fundamental".
The question now remains as to whether the judges believe that the mandate passes this litmus test. It's clear that half the court does, and half doesn't. It's down to whether Kennedy does or doesn't believe. It's a shame that such a controversial Bill, which will affect every citizen in the country, and give the Feds new precedents to coerce purchase, has basically come down to the views of one man. But that's what happens when you load the Supreme Court with partisan judges.
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Right, partisan judges like those who think that property rights is a thing more strongly than the due process clause implies. I would feel that the mandate does not violate due process, and it is within the federal government's power to regulate commerce (because we have a long history of the federal government regulating healthcare in some form) and that to be able to successfully implement certain regulations, universal market participation is required (under the vaunted laws of free-market economics), thus is needed under the commerce clause and not in violation of the 10th amendment because it is clear that health care has become a shared power, whereby under the Supremacy clause, Federal government wins.
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That's... a really big stretch... and also something you could literally say about ANY market with that kind of reach in logic.
I don't mean this in an insulting way or anything, but it feels like you wrote this while drunk. Your essentially argueing what Scalia asked and what event the goverment prosecutor denied (but never really properly articulated why) that pretty much the government could force you to buy Broccoli if it wanted.
Afterall, using your logic, we have a long history of federally regulating food... and there are regulations that could only be passed with universal food participation... or really, universal anything participation, because just about anything goes down in price when you add more buyers.
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Tired, not drunk, hence the brevity. I was, however, being kept awake by drunk people, so there is an association there.
The difference is that there is a government need to regulate healthcare and that forcing individuals to buy health insurance is pursuant to that need to regulate healthcare. This cannot extend to allowing the government to force us to buy anything and everything because forced purchases would harm material goods markets (by driving prices up unnecessarily) as opposed to the insurance market where more demand actually lowers prices because you have a larger pool of healthy people paying in.
The most this could lead to on any sort of "slippery slope" argument would be the government forcing us to buy different varieties of insurance for the good of the insurance buying public, whereas forcing us to buy brocolli would be bad for the brocolli buying public, driving prices up in the short run and causing markets to shift to the production of unnecessary amounts of brocolli in the long run (lowering prices but creating macro inefficiency). Insurance being a non-tangible good means it can be created limitlessly
If the representation from the Attorney General abandoned that argument, it is simply a failure to think of it in the proper direction. The insurance market is apples-oranges against pretty much every other kind of goods or service.
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Except
A) It wouldn't drive up prices, since production would increase too, things would get cheaper in most goods due to the economics of scale.
B) It's clearly NOT needed. We already regulate healthcare, other countries regulate heatlhcare weithout an indivudal mandate.
Even if we accept your specific political premises that forcing everyone into the system would make it cheaper, doing something clearly illegal because it makes your job easier and work better isn't a justification for doing something clearly illegal. The government could regulate heatlhcare without the indivdual mandate. It just hasn't.
Essentially your argument boils down to "We can't regulate healthcare this very specific way without this huge expansion in power, therefore we want this huge expansion in power.
Though even that isn't accurate, since you could still pass the law without the individual mandate, it's just insurance would get prohibitly expensive due to dumb regulation. Additionally, and I know you prefer this, you could provide a national healthcare system. That would be a regulation that would not require everyone to pay for it. (directly, constiutionally there is a difference.)
Now congress doesn't want to regulate healthcare that way, though that seems largely irrelevent... constiutional law and precendent shouldn't be upended to appease the distaste of politicians.
This is all why it's unconsitutional without even attempting a right wing view on the matter. Were instead we were to be trying to move from a Europeon style healthcare plan to the Invidiual mandate, this is the kind of arguement you'd be hearing from Ginsberg and the liberal judges.
