From The Washington Times:

Americans have grown used to Congress claiming the right to regulate and control everything they do. But by what right can Congress force Americans to purchase health insurance?

This question is at the root of lawsuits filed by 14 states challenging Obamacare’s requirement that those without health insurance must obtain it or face fines of $2,085 per household or 2.5 percent of income – whichever is greater.

Defenders of the new law point to the constitutional provision empowering Congress to regulate interstate commerce. The Supreme Court has long interpreted the Commerce Clause to extend well beyond what a common-sense reading would support. In the 1942 case Wickard v. Filburn, the high court ruled that farmer Roscoe Filburn could not grow wheat in excess of limits set by the 1938 Agricultural Adjustment Act. It did not matter that the wheat was grown on his own land for his own use – in this case feeding his chickens. According to the court, “control of total supply … depends upon the control of individual supply.” If enough farmers like Filburn grew their own chicken feed, they would not buy it, and this would have an impact on commerce nationwide. The Congress that can regulate Roscoe Filburn’s chicken feed can regulate anything.

Still, Congress never claimed it could force people to take up farming or any other vocation. This is the radical interpretation of the Commerce Clause embedded in the health care bill. It is not a power to regulate commercial activity, but to compel it.

The change is unprecedented. All previous Commerce Clause cases have dealt with regulating pre-existing activity, but if someone is not buying health insurance, there is no commerce to regulate. The clause has never been used to compel private citizens not engaged in commerce to spend money on a government-mandated program. This is a new, extreme and potentially dangerous interpretation.

Professor Erwin Chemerinsky of the University of California, Irvine, School of Law defends the individual mandate on the grounds that the Commerce Clause “includes authority to regulate activities that have a substantial effect on interstate commerce. In the area of economic activities, ‘substantial effect’ can be found based on the cumulative impact of the activity across the country.”

This is a significantly flawed view as applied to the individual mandate because almost everything people do or choose not to do has a “substantial effect” on commerce. It would by extension give Congress the power to regulate all human activity or inactivity. Professor Chemerinsky’s interpretation of the Commerce Clause represents a significant threat to human freedom because it gives Congress essentially unlimited power. The Constitution is an instrument created to limit the power of government, not a vehicle to justify its infinite reach. Thus, any line of argument that grants limitless powers under the Constitution is inherently wrong. Any laws justified by such claims are, by the same reasoning, abhorrent to the Constitution and must be overturned.

The states fighting Obamacare in court are concerned with more than just health care. At stake are two fundamental views of the nature of the Constitution. In one, government power is limited. It enables and supports human liberty, serves as a referee to keep the game fair and punishes criminals who break the law. In the other view, government is a coercive mechanism that aims at perfecting a social vision in which personal freedom takes a back seat to the utopian plan where the ends justify the means.

The lawsuits arising from the government health care takeover will help to clarify these issues. They will force the government to justify its actions in terms that will be acceptable not only to the courts, but also by the people. Whether or not the states prevail, it is doubtful that the Obama administration and the Democrats in Congress will be able to satisfy the public that their rights and liberties, not to mention health and pocketbooks, have to be sacrificed in pursuit of this particular vision of paradise.

From Jewish World Review:

The Reality of ObamaCare

First: Congratulations to President Obama and the Democratic leadership. You won dirty against bipartisan opposition from both Congress and the majority of Americans. You’ve definitely polarized the country even more, and quite possibly bankrupted us, too. But hey, you won. Bubbly for everyone.

Simply, you have nationalized health care by proxy. Insurance companies are now heavily regulated government contractors. Way to get big business out of Washington and our lives! These giant corporations will clear a small, government-approved profit on top of their government-approved fees. Then, when health care costs rise — and they will — Democrats will insist, yet again, that the profit motive is to blame, and out from this ObamaCare Trojan horse will pour another army of liberals demanding a more honest version of single-payer.

The Obama administration has turned the insurance industry into the Blackwater of socialized medicine.

That’s always what Obama had in mind. During the now-legendary health care summit, Obama, who loves to talk about “risk pools,” “competition,” “consumer choice” and the like, let it slip that he actually doesn’t believe in insurance as commonly understood. The notion that Americans should buy the health care “equivalent of Acme Insurance that I had for my car” seemed preposterous to him. “I’m buying that to protect me from some catastrophic situation,” he explained. “Otherwise, I’m just paying out of pocket. I don’t go to the doctor. I don’t get preventive care. There are a whole bunch of things I just do without. But if I get hit by a truck, maybe I don’t go bankrupt.” Apparently, people are just too stupid to go to the doctor — or maintain their homes — if they have to pay much of anything out of pocket.

The endgame was to get the young and healthy to buy more expensive insurance than they need or want. “Expanding the risk pool” and “spreading out the risk” by mandating — i.e., forcing — young people to buy insurance is just market-based spin for socialist ends. A risk pool is an actuarial device where a lot of people pay a small sum to cover themselves against a “rainy day” problem that will affect only a few people. Such “peace of mind” health insurance is gone. What we have now is health assurance. With health assurance, there are no “risk pools” really, only payment plans.

Under the new law, all the exits from the system are blocked. You can’t opt out or buy cheap, high-deductible Acme Car-type insurance, even if that’s what you need. Ultimately, even that coercion won’t be enough to make the whole thing work because the “cost curve” will not be bending.

Profit-hungry insurance companies were never the problem. (According to American Enterprise Institute economist Andrew Biggs, industry profit margins are around 3 percent, and the entire industry recorded profits of just $13 billion last year, close to a rounding error in Medicare fraud estimates.) Rather, health care costs have been skyrocketing because consumers treat health insurance like an expense account. Putting almost everyone into one “risk pool” doesn’t change that dynamic; it universalizes it. And eventually, the only way to cut costs will be to ration care.

In September, Obama got into a semantic argument with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos, who noted that requiring all Americans to pay premiums for a government-guaranteed service sounds an awful lot like a tax. “No. That’s not true, George,” Obama said. “For us to say that you’ve got to take a responsibility to get health insurance is absolutely not a tax increase. What it’s saying is … that we’re not going to have other people carrying your burdens for you.”

Stephanopoulos invoked a dictionary definition of a tax: “a charge, usually of money, imposed by authority on persons or property for public purposes.” Obama laughed off the idea that a dictionary might outrank him as the final arbiter of a word’s meaning: “George, the fact that you looked up … the definition of tax increase indicates to me that you’re stretching a little bit right now. Otherwise, you wouldn’t have gone to the dictionary to check on the definition.”

OK, put aside your dictionaries. The legislation allocates $10 billion to pay for 16,500 IRS agents who will collect and enforce mandatory “premiums.” Does that sound like the private sector at work to you?

Related posts:

1. Supreme Court may weigh coverage mandate
2. Rep. Stark defends ObamaCare, explains that the Constitution has no meaning at all
3. Judge Gives Virginia OK to Press On With Health Care Lawsuit Against Feds
4. Obamacare could actually kill Constitution
5. Obamacare is Seriously Unconstitutional
6. Is National Health Insurance Constitutional?
7. Legal Expert: Court Could Overturn Obamacare
8. Health Care, Barack Obama, and the U.S. Constitution
9. Maryland Becomes Second State to Offer Federally Funded Abortions under Obamacare
10. Jailtime for those who refuse to buy Obamacare?