U.S. District Judge Roger Vinson delivered a stunning setback to the Obama administration when the Pensacola, Florida jurist ruled Jan. 31 that president’s signature legislation, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (aka “ObamaCare”) must be declared void.”
Judge Vinson’s decision declared that the federal government cannot compel citizens to buy products, undercutting the linchpin of the legislation, the federal “insurance mandate,” which requires all citizens to buy health insurance. Because there is nothing in the bill that allows the insurance mandate to be severed from the rest of the bill, the bill had to be rejected in its entirety.
Although the Supreme Court will make the final decision as to the constitutionality of ObamaCare, if it is permitted to stand, Democrats its authority could be used to require people to buy products other than insurance, such as only goods made in union shops, for example.
Not only are individual rights being trampled on by the Act but so also are states’ rights. Twenty–seven states are plaintiffs in the lawsuit. The states, under ObamaCare regulations, face the burden of paying for huge enlargements of Medicaid. Virginia had filed its own separate suit, making it 27 states against ObamaCare.
It is a relatively undisputed, given current case law, that the Congress has the authority to regulate interstate commerce under the Commerce Clause (Article I, Section 8, Clause 3). However, “[i]t would be a radical departure from existing case law to hold that Congress can regulate inactivity under the commerce clause. If it has the power to compel…it would have set out to create a government with the power to force people to buy tea in the first place,” the judge said in his decision. It is precisely the “non-buying” of healthcare insurance that the Obama administration is trying to argue constitutes an economic activity.
The danger in such a line of reasoning is obvious. Judge Vinson pointed out:
Congress could require that people buy and consume broccoli…because people who eat healthier tend to be healthier…and put less strain on the health care system. Similarly, because virtually no one can be divorced from the transportation market, Congress could require that everyone…buy a General Motors automobile….
Judge Vinson’s ruling was not a great surprise. He had held in October that the suit, brought by then-20 state attorneys general, could go forward despite Obama administration opposition.
Vinson’s ruling Jan. 31 followed the Dec. 13 decision of U.S. District Judge Henry Hudson that the federal government could not require individuals to buy health insurance. Hudson said Congress had exceeded its constitutional authority to regulate interstate commerce by compelling people “to involuntarily engage in a private commercial transaction.”
While Judge Hudson struck down the individual mandate, the lawsuit brought by 20 states before Judge Vinson in October challenged not only the mandate but also the expensive Medicaid provisions of the healthcare act.
In his October ruling, Judge Vinson raked over the administration’s claim that the mandate is somehow a tax. Vinson said in October: “Congress did not intend to impose a tax when it imposed the penalty. To hold otherwise would require me to look beyond the plain words of the statute. I would have to ignore that Congress: (i) specifically changed the term in previous incarnations of the statute from ‘tax’ to ‘penalty[.]’”
Judge Vinson, making the Administration’s legal team’s efforts even more fanciful, said further that: “Congress should not be… calling something one thing, after which the defenders of that legislation take on an ‘Alice-in-Wonderland’ tack and argue in court that Congress really meant something else entirely[.]”
ObamaCare would massively expand Medicaid provisions beginning in January 2014. Medicaid would be available to any person under age 65 who falls below 133 percent of the federal poverty threshold. The law’s goal is to give health care to an additional 32 million people.
Unlike the Hudson and Vinson rulings, two other court cases, in Michigan and Pennsylvania, rendered decisions declaring ObamaCare constitutional.
Of all the court challenges to the health care overhaul, the Jan. 31 decision is the most significant because of the number of states that signed on as plaintiffs, the breadth of provisions examined, and the fact that the entire act—not just the individual mandate to buy insurance—was held to be unconstitutional.
The Justice Department, unsurprisingly, announced Dec. 14 it would appeal Judge Hudson’s ruling declaring unconstitutional the individual mandate. Justice officials asked the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals in Virginia to overturn the decision. A number of officials, including Virginia’s governor, urged the administration to take the case directly to the Supreme Court. Surely, the Justice Department will quickly challenge Judge Vinson’s decision.
Since ObamaCare’s passage, the law has received significant pushback, according to health research firm, the Galen Institute: At least 42 states either have passed or introduced legislation designed to protect their citizens from the insurance purchase mandate; hundreds of hearings have been held around the country to find out from businesses the impact of the health law’s impact on job costs and job creation; and governors are pleading for more flexibility over Medicaid rules, as costs of this health program for the poor are consuming state resources for everything from education to public safety.
Some governors are looking at Rhode Island’s success. It was given a waiver from the Bush administration to receive its Medicaid funding as a block grant rather than as a match of federal spending. The state saved $150 million in the first 18 months.
The Supreme Court has restricted the power of Congress to use the Commerce Clause in past years. As recently as 1995, the Supreme Court held that Congress only has the power to regulate the “channels of commerce, the instrumentalities of commerce and action that affects interstate commerce.”
Judge Vinson’s decision, as a legal matter, may not be as important as its political dimension. The fact that so many states want to invalidate ObamaCare creates momentum for the opposition that is bound to influence political figures, the public and, possibly, even the Supreme Court.
President Obama’s signature achievement now lies under the clouds of realistic constitutional suspicion.
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