Boarder
10/7/2010, 05:03 PM
http://www.scotusblog.com/2010/10/health-insurance-mandate-upheld/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+scotusblog%2FpFXs+%28SCOTUSbl og%29
The key to most of the challenges is that refusing to buy health insurance is not activity, but inactivity, and Congress has never had the power to order people to engage in economic inactivity.
But Judge Creeh refused to accept that view of what the insurance mandate is. “Far from ‘inactivity,’” the judge wrote, by choosing to forgo insurance [the challengers] are making an economic decision to try to pay for health care services later, out of pocket, rather than now through the purchase of insurance, collectively shifting billions of dollars, $43 billion in 2008, onto other market participants.”
This “cost-shifting,” the opinion added, “is exactly what the Health Care Reform Act was enacted to address.” Thus, he rejected the argument of the challengers that he would have to go through “metaphysical gymnastics” in order to find a link between a failure to buy insurance and the interstate market for health insurance.
Commerce Clause wins.
The key to most of the challenges is that refusing to buy health insurance is not activity, but inactivity, and Congress has never had the power to order people to engage in economic inactivity.
But Judge Creeh refused to accept that view of what the insurance mandate is. “Far from ‘inactivity,’” the judge wrote, by choosing to forgo insurance [the challengers] are making an economic decision to try to pay for health care services later, out of pocket, rather than now through the purchase of insurance, collectively shifting billions of dollars, $43 billion in 2008, onto other market participants.”
This “cost-shifting,” the opinion added, “is exactly what the Health Care Reform Act was enacted to address.” Thus, he rejected the argument of the challengers that he would have to go through “metaphysical gymnastics” in order to find a link between a failure to buy insurance and the interstate market for health insurance.
Commerce Clause wins.