I have read the 65-page decision by Judge Vinson in Florida that allowed the 20 State challenge against Obamacare to go forward. It’s very well reasoned and measured, in my view. The two biggest deals are:
1. The fine for not buying insurance is probably not a tax, but as the law states, a penalty. This means a different constitutional standard applies making it perhaps easier for the states to challenge.
2. The individual purchase mandate is “unprecedented,” and hence, a cause of action has been stated that the law exceeds the federal power under the Commerce Clause.
This just permits the case to proceed. It does not reach any final conclusions. For anyone wanting a more thorough–but not overly lengthy–summary, head on over to Secondhand Smoke.
October 14th, 2010 | 5:16 pm
This may be a dumb question: If states can require individuals to buy auto insurance, why can they not require individuals to buy health insurance. Hasn’t that line already been crossed?
October 14th, 2010 | 5:33 pm
Thanks Feeney. It is a no brainer. They make us purchase auto insurance because they don’t want people riding around crashing into people and causing untold economic damage and personal calamity; yet, the government cannot do the same for health insurance. It is exactly the same. All one needs to know is, Vinson is a Reagan appointee. You do not have to even wait for his lousy decision throwing the health care law out. This will be decided in the Appeals Court, and then the US Supreme Court. But remember, one district has already ruled differently.
October 14th, 2010 | 6:00 pm
Kids,
The difference is that the requirement to purchase car insurance is levied at the state level whereas the health care law is a federal requirement which arguably exceeds the federal government’s power under the Constitution. The question posed by the case is the scope of federal authority.
October 14th, 2010 | 6:13 pm
Gee, I’d like to read the ruling too. How ’bout posting a link to the PDF file for us?
October 14th, 2010 | 6:17 pm
Matt, no one is forced to buy a car, thus no one is forced to buy car insurance. It’s really very simple, we are not free when our government forces us to do that which we expressly do not want to do; except of course illegal things like stealing, rape, murder. (I can’t believe I needed to clarify that last point.)
October 14th, 2010 | 6:23 pm
A person voluntarily decides to drive a car. In fact, you need training and to pass a test to get licensed to do so. If, for example, a person decides not to drive a car but to take a taxi or public transportion, he is not required to buy auto insurance. You only have to buy auto insurance if you decide you want to drive. In contrast, if you exist as a US Citizen, under Obamicare, you must buy health insurance. There is nothing you can “not” do, to avoid penalties, short of renoucing your citizenship, leaving the country and removing yourself from the jurisidiction of the laws of the United State. The analogy between auto insurance and health insurance was always illogical and inconsistent, but it was put forth by the Sophists to pursuade and confuse the electorate.
October 14th, 2010 | 6:28 pm
CJ: I link it at Secondhand Smoke.
October 14th, 2010 | 8:01 pm
What I would like to know is just how much this insurance will cost each individual or family. The problem now is that many people cannot afford insurance. Under the Obama plan, these same people will still not be able to afford it, but now will be fined or jailed for not having insurance they cannot afford. I thought debtor’s prison was illegal in this country. By the way, I’ve been a nurse for over 20 years and know many families that fall into this group of uninsured due to high cost.
October 14th, 2010 | 8:46 pm
It has the same effect as a tax.
October 14th, 2010 | 9:09 pm
You know if they think its against our constitutional right,,,,being penalized if we don’t buy the insurance. Then why stop there? What about auto insurance, if you don’t have public liability insurance…you’re PENALIZED!!@!
Thank GOD my state is one of the states that will not sue over the health bill. Now I feel proud. As I think anybody else in my state feels the same way. If you’re going to stop mandating insurance do it for all!!! Health and Auto!!
October 14th, 2010 | 9:48 pm
The difference is that there is no requirement to purchase car insurance. The requirement is to purchase car insurance if and only if you own or regularly drive a car. The health insurance requirement kicks into play only in the circumstance in which you are breathing.
October 14th, 2010 | 10:45 pm
G.K. Chesterton on what qualifies as a tax or a fine:
“One can hardly tell the difference between a tax and a fine, except that the fine is usually much lighter.”
October 15th, 2010 | 7:37 am
This is a question already asked.
States can require drivers to buy auto insurances only if they drive on public roads. If they drive only inside their properties, they are not required to be insured. Anyway, they can choose to not drive and can not be forced to pay the insurance.
On the other side, the health insurance mandate force all living people to be insured. You don’t choose to live and can not be forced to be dead to avoid paying it. This because the health insurance is not a tax.
October 15th, 2010 | 10:16 am
Also, often you don’t actually have to buy car insurance at all. Insurance is just one particular way for you to prove that you are able to be financially responsible should you cause someone else harm. In CA at least you can place a deposit with the state to demonstrate the same thing. Another way this mandate to purchase health-insurance is absolutely unprecedented.
I am not a lawyer, but the notion that the government (federal or state) can order me to buy a product from a private company–ANY product from ANY company–is absurd. Lunacy. Garbage. And no number of court decisions will make it less so.
October 15th, 2010 | 11:31 am
I agree with everyone about the difference between the auto insurance requirement and the new health insurance requirement. However, there’s a more important underlying similarity. Driving cars is hazardous, and accidents can be expensive and even catastrophic to injured parties. Hence the insurance mandate. If you don’t drive a car, for the most part you don’t contribute to this risk pool. At least you don’t take the initiative to add to it by buying and driving a car; it makes sense to exempt non-drivers/non-car-owners from the requirement.
However, everyone contributes to the increasingly expensive—and often catastrophically so—risk pool when it comes to health care. There’s no way to “not buy a car” or to “not drive” when it comes to health. The equivalent would be “not living,” which would be exceedingly strange for the “culture of life” folks to imply is an option and therefore why we shouldn’t mandate health insurance!
Have a major accident, have a rare disease, and boom, you’re looking at tens, even hundreds of thousands of dollars in health care bills if you don’t have insurance. Hospitals cannot turn emergency patients away, and someone must bear the costs. Indeed we already are. They’re already being passed along to paying health care consumers right now. The new law is meant to make that risk sharing more rational and sustainable over the long haul.
All that to say, the underlying similarities between auto insurance and health insurance are arguably more important than the differences.
October 15th, 2010 | 2:01 pm
There are significant differences between automobile liability insurance and health insurance. As one poster noted, the states require auto insurance as part of their general regulatory/police powers – the federal government does not have general police power. The primary purpose of auto insurance is to protect third parties, not yourself – which is why you do not have to buy the many other forms of insurance products (which protect you) if you do not want to.
October 15th, 2010 | 2:34 pm
“The new law is meant to make that risk sharing more rational and sustainable over the long haul.”
It makes absolutely no difference what the law is “meant” to do, or how noble the goals may be. The question is whether Congress has the power to do what the law actually says. And they do not. No way, no how.
October 15th, 2010 | 3:33 pm
The key, Feeny, is that states have their own separate constitutions. Those constitutions give separate rights to the people of the individual states they represent. The people of the state can write in their constitution that they agree, even though they don’t have to under the US constitution, that all people have to buy insurance.
By contrast, what is being discussed here is the Federal Constitution. The Constitution, likely, does not give Congress the right to force people to buy Health Insurance. So you need to get a majority (actually, super majority) to agree that they will be bound to such a law and modify the constitution.
The problem is, the entire country has not agreed that they want to have such a rule. In fact, not even 45% of the country wants such a rule. (~65% of the country does not want it.)
As an example… Grandpa [metahorically, the US Constitution] says: “When you earn money, outside of taxes, I cannot tell you how to spend it.” The a Family [metaphorically, the State Constitutions] says: “We all agree that we can tell the whole family how to spend a % of their money.”
Same thing here, the Federal constitution says, you cannot tell people how to spend their money. The State says, we don’t have to do it this way, but we all agree that we can tell the people they have to spend their money this way and we write this into our constitution.
October 15th, 2010 | 4:25 pm
Brian,
We’ll see, I guess. I evidently don’t possess the crystal ball that you do. The problem can’t be the federal mandate to have insurance—what are social security, medicaid, and medicare if not federally mandated insurance programs of a kind? The “problem” would have to be with mandating the purchase of private insurance, and for penalizing folks for failing to do so. If this turns out to be unconstitutional, then the “more constitutional” solution to our manifestly dysfunctional health-care system would be the single payer route. Should a single-payer system ever emerge as a response to this plan’s being declared unconstitutional, critics of “Obamacare” (aka what many Republicans favored before Obama endorsed it) will have themselves to thank for it, at least in part.
October 15th, 2010 | 4:57 pm
“I evidently don’t possess the crystal ball that you do.”
Actually, my crystal ball is cloudy because I have no idea what Anthony Kennedy will do. There are certainly 4 justices who I would be shocked to see vote the correct way on this issue. Regardless of the votes of black-robed judges, the individual mandate is an outrage.
“the “more constitutional” solution to our manifestly dysfunctional health-care system would be the single payer route.”
Nonsense. Health-insurance is currently run through the big institutions of large employers and the government. Removing the large employers and solely running things through government will only make problems worse. The answer of course is to go the complete opposite direction, and empower the individual to have more choice and control over their own health.
“Should a single-payer system ever emerge as a response to this plan’s being declared unconstitutional, critics of “Obamacare” (aka what many Republicans favored before Obama endorsed it) will have themselves to thank for it, at least in part.”
Balderdash. The Democrat party desperately wants single payer, so they can make every single health-care worker in the nation into an SEIU member. Obamacare is designed to destroy the private health-insurance industry and force us into single-payer soon enough. Don’t blame those of us who are trying to stop their outrageous powergrab.
October 16th, 2010 | 1:16 pm
The question that will ultimately be decided in this case is does the Commerce Clause create a de facto Federal general police power and thus give congress more or less carte blanche to enact any legislation they desire with impunity. Should the state mandate be upheld it will open this door. For instance, since the court would have ruled that the federal government has the power to force an individual to engage in the activity of purchasing individual health insurance under the theory that by not doing so it creates increased expense to the rest of society, then they would not be constrained in the passage of further legislation forcing additional actions. Could they not under the same logic mandate that every person join a health club and participate in physical exercise for one hour three days a week and report compliance on their tax return or face a penalty? Working out leads to better health and thus lower cost to the general public. At what point does the power of the Commerce Clause end?
October 18th, 2010 | 3:34 pm
One critical difference, that i did not see on here, is that you are only required to purchase auto insurance if you own a car. No car = no insurance.
This Law requires every one with a pulse to purchase health insurance which is a violation off the commerce clause.
October 20th, 2010 | 5:56 pm
No one is forced to obtain and keep their license to drive. A driver’s license is a privilege, not a right. Therefore, states can enact and enforce any reasonable requirements (like liability insurance) as a condition precedent to obtaining and maintaining that privilege.
November 4th, 2010 | 12:24 pm
I haven’t seen a doctor since December of 1987 because it has been my choice not to go. I hate doctors and feel they cause more harm than good and they DO NOT cure ANYBODY. I REFUSE to buy into the notion to maintain years worth of insurance “just in case”. I am not one of the illegal aliens who finds it a “science” to go to the emergency room every time they want a state-paid-for prescription for TYLENOL. I live a very holistic existence and have not had more than five milds colds in nearly 23 years. I do not drink, do not smoke, do not take drugs. I am appalled at the thought of being FORCED to buy insurance or face an enormous fine or jail time. I haven’t seen any need to go to any doctors in all these years and if they force me to buy insurance, will they force me to see doctors ALSO against my wishes. Growing up, my mother MUST have been afflicted with Munchausen-By-Proxy disorder; she forced me to go to the doctors for every known POSSIBLE reason EVERY SATURDAY for eighteen years and I never saw such a bunch of crooks to KNOW nothing was EVER wrong, yet they eagerly padded their pockets by poking and prodding me to their hearts’ content, all while I balked at all of these u nnecessary visits. NEVER AGAIN will I WILLINGLY see a doctor and NOBODY can make me do so. It’s bad enough my tax dollars are paying for everybody else to gleefully live off of the system. I do NOT add to the grueling backlog of doctors’ fees. I hate doctors.
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