Biggest blow to date for ObamaCare

Judges call Obama Administration’s Arguments “Convenient Sleight of Hand”

Biggest blow to date for ObamaCare

     

  On Friday, August 12, the 11^th Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta ruled that the new national health care law is unconstitutional for forcing US citizens to purchase health insurance.  The Court upheld the January ruling of Judge Roger Vinson of the Northern District of Florida, which stated that it’s unconstitutional to require people to purchase health insuranc

Twenty-six attorneys general originally filed the Florida suit, alleging that the individual mandate violates the Commerce Clause of the Constitution.  The Commerce Clause states that the federal government can regulate commerce between the states.  In January; the court ruled that if individuals choose not to buy health insurance, they are not engaging in interstate commerce and therefore are not covered by the clause.  Judge Vinson wrote at that time that if Congress “has the power to compel an otherwise passive individual into a commercial transaction” there is no practical limit on Congress’ power.

In last Friday’s 2-1 decision, the Circuit Court of Appeals agreed that the individual mandate portion of the Affordable Care Act is unconstitutional, although the rest of the law could stand.  With this decision, Judge Frank Hull, appointed by former President Bill Clinton, became the first Democrat-appointed judge to rule against the law.

The judges called the Obama administration’s arguments a “convenient sleight of hand,” obscuring what the law truly does.  In reality, they concluded, it forces healthy people to buy “fully loaded” health plans in order to subsidize insurance companies.  The judges wrote that in imposing the mandate “Congress sought to mitigate” the costs of popular reforms like covering pre-existing conditions and removing lifetime caps on payouts “by compelling healthy Americans outside the insurance market to enter the private insurance market and buy insurer’s products.

The opinion stated that “This economic mandate represents a wholly novel and potentially unbounded assertion of congressional authority:  the ability to compel Americans to purchase an expensive health insurance product they have elected not to buy, and to make them re-purchase that insurance product every month for their entire lives.”  They also said that “The government’s position amounts to an argument that the mere fact of an individual’s existence substantially affects interstate commerce, and therefore Congress may regulate them at every point of their life.”

The federal government will now have 90 days to appeal to the Supreme Court or to ask the full appeals court to review the case.

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