Can you be coerced into buying a good or service? George Will addresses that issue in this article: http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2009/11/19/fighting_a_coericion_clause_99203.html I'm surprised no one has brought up the specter of a legal challenge to the health care legislation that includes mandating health insurance.
It's an interesting question. If it is found unconstitutional, one possible remedy is to make it a tax, and have the government buy the insurance on the taxpayer's behalf. barfo
By all means, if something is unconstitutional, just create a legal technicality to get around it. This is the new way of the Democratic Party.
A key passage: But a Federalist Society study by Peter Urbanowicz and Dennis Smith judges it perverse to exercise coercion under the Commerce Clause "on an individual who chooses not to undertake a commercial transaction." As Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, says, there is "a fundamental difference between regulating activities in which individuals choose to engage" -- e.g, drivers can be required to buy auto insurance -- "and requiring such activities" just because an individual exists.
Well ever since George Bush ripping up the Constitution, we can all do whatever we want, right? Bush did rip up the Constitution, right? I mean, our lives are the same as they were before he was President, but I don't think that all those people bitching about him being a traitor and destroying our way of life were using hyperbole or political exaggeration, were they? Ed O.
Those on the Right look to defend the Constitution; those on the Left look at it as an obstacle to be surmounted.
OK, so let’s say that the federal healthcare plan is determined to be unconstitutional by the US Supreme Court over the mandating aspects. Then what? It seems to me there would be two options: 1) Try something more creative and less hostile to provide healthcare to the masses. There are many good ideas out there. 2) Since the stated hope is the elimination of insurance companies, Obama/Reid/Pelosi will have to step it up and force their demise probably within 2 years. That will be tough as the measures would have to be so extreme as to probably lose support among the moderate democrats.
