And then there were two: Second Federal court rules ObamaCare unconstitutional
By JR Hoeft | Monday, January 31st, 2011 | Policy
In Florida, 26 states who filed suit against the Federal government over “ObamaCare”, following Virginia’s lead, had their suit upheld when Judge Roger Vinson said that the “individual mandate” (you, dear citizen, shall carry insurance or pay a fee) is unconstitutional with respect to the “Commerce Clause.”
Once again, in the enumerated powers of the United States Congress (Article I, Section 8), the so-called “Commerce Clause” is Congressional authority:
“To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes”
Hmm. Don’t see individual mandate in that bad boy. Nonetheless, that has been the claim of our federal government.
In December, Judge Henry Hudson in Virginia’s eastern district federal court, ruled the “individual mandate” also unconstitutional.
We’re hoping to get a statement from the Office of Virginia’s Attorney General (aka Ken Cuccinelli) shortly, but, understandably, they are reading and digesting the legal opinion.
The judge was a Reagan appointee…does this mean that Reagan just squashed Obamacare?
Update from Virginia’s Attorney General:
“I am heartened by the fact that another federal judge has found that the individual mandate forcing citizens to buy private health insurance is unconstitutional. The judge also found that the individual mandate could not be severed from the remainder of the law, so he declared the entire act invalid.
“Constitutional principles have scored another victory today. Liberty has scored another victory today.
“I congratulate Florida Attorney General Bondi, former Attorney General McCollum, and the attorneys general and governors who joined the Florida suit, on their victory.”
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Conservative to the core; liberal with his opinion! J.R. has been involved in politics for over a decade and has worked on several campaigns in Hampton Roads. He has served on the Executive Committee of the Republican Party of Chesapeake and the Central Committee of the Republican Party of Virginia. He is also the director of “Blogs United” in Virginia. E-mail J.R.. Follow J.R. on Twitter.
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15 Responses to "And then there were two: Second Federal court rules ObamaCare unconstitutional"
I thank after Judge Hudson’s opinion, everyone knew this was going to be decided by the Supreme Court.
Should have gone for a single-payer plan — which clearly IS constitutional.
Perhaps more of the judiciary will have their say. I believe it’s 3-2 as we post. Of course, pulling benefits from children, from those who will be insured but won’t be if this view prevails, taking coverage from those under 26 who have it now but won’t, taking coverage from those with pre-existing conditions or those who used too much coverage, and adding back to the deficit is not a fully defensible position. Further, republicans who defend a system that is clearly broken, which has among the highest costs of all industrialized societies and the least effective health results, is typical of their convoluted thinking going on right now.
Mike – Those under 26? The coverage they can get now that they couldn’t before was mom and dad’s. It’s not that they couldn’t get insurance, it’s that they’d have to pay for it themselves. Nothing makes it cheaper.
Well yes, you’re right. But given the situation with young people getting out of college these days, and moving back in with Mom and Dad, for many, this is a great benefit.
Actually Mike, it’s 14-2 as we speak. 14 challenges to the health care reform act have been denied.
The arrogant belligerently stupid Dems are going to see their entire agenda of the past 2 years unravel. Does any remember campaign finance reform?(Incidentally that was quite a bit more popular than anything Obama has proposed.) A President may be able to impose an unpopular foreign project because of his/her Constitutional primacy there, but to try the same tactic in the domestic sphere is ridiculous. Particularly when whatever limited benefits of Obamacare could have have been instituted with a 27 page bill. The other 2673 pages were designed to aid the Dems and their cronies politically and financially and grow government – period.
S Vaughan says Actually Mike, it’s 14-2 as we speak. 14 challenges to the health care reform act have been denied.
States 2 Obama 0.
I believe the others were dismissed due to lack of standing or were ruled on the basis of policy necessity (to the Dems) rather than any specific Constitutional support.
You are correct that a more straightforward program might have been Constitutionally safer albeit even more politically unpopular. Obama and the Dems think they are so clever hiding their march to single payer behind weird costumes. I would respect them more if they explained why they think single payer is so great and try to sell their views to the public. Instead they sneak around whispering amongst themselves how stupid the voters are.
Mike,
I understand your viewpoint and perhaps the system does need to be fixed, but declaring that we have the “least effective health care result?” I don’t think that can be backed up. How come all the wealthy leaders around the world come here to get treated.
The individual mandate is clearly unconstitutional. The bill needs to be repealed and then Congress can work on real reforms, not this complete take over of 1/3 of the nation’s economy.
@ Jason,
I graduated from college in 2006 and was subsequently dropped from my parent’s insurance plan. When I went to apply for my own coverage with Blue Cross Blue Shield I was rejected. I wasn’t offered a more expensive plan, just flat out rejected because I had my ACL repaired the year before. I ended up having to appeal the decision and was eventually granted the ability to purchase insurance, but the whole ordeal left me without insurance for 2 months. Not to mention at age 21 I was paying $200 a month for coverage.
@ valentinus,
What are those limited benefits of Obamacare? And what are the negatives of Obamacare? Are you just looking for a fight because you don’t like President Obama and Dems. Your post shows that you’ve got quite a dislike for Dems. Maybe you don’t recognize this, but the country is divided half and half and your name calling doesn’t do you very well. It makes you look, well, “arrogant belligerently stupid,” not to mention you probably really don’t dislike all Dems. So next time why don’t you try come up with an argument that doesn’t include name calling. And you surely don’t believe that the health care bill was just trying to grow government, now you just sound ridiculous, come back to reality.
@ Chris,
There is quite a difference between health care systems and individual hospitals that provide care for paying patients. Why not ask a random number of Americans on Facebook about their health care and then do the same for Canada or any European country? I think you might be surprised that a many Americans are quite dissatisfied with the heath care system we have but many Canadians and Europeans are quite pleased with theirs. Of course one might ask you, why is there “health tourism” to India and other less developed/developing countries? And to answer your question about why so many wealthy leaders around the world come here to get treated, they come here because we have good doctors if you can pay for it. But of course, who are those wealthy leaders you mention? Try naming a few and then I’ll get back to you on why that individual came to the United States for care.
For the silly score keepers – this isn’t a baseball game. Your bill has to be 100% constitutional. Cuccinelli and others only need to prove 1 part to be unconstitutional and depending on the ruling, kill the whole thing or just portions of it.
Torn Acl – you should have been offered COBRA when you were dropped. Maybe too expensive? The fact is, difficult and expensive or not, you did get insurance. Assuming nothing else is wrong with you, given your age, a medical savings account coupled with cost effiecient catastrophic care coverage would be a good possible route.
That said, I don’t understand the logic of denying you coverage based on that. What about coverage that doesn’t cover your pre-existing condition. Is it that likely that you’d re-injure it?
And plenty of people in Canada are victims of rationing based on waiting forever to be treated. Sometimes they die first. Then you have that issue in the UK denying mammograms to women. Being denied treatment based on a lack of cost effectiveness leads straight to “death panels”.
Britt Howard
Do you know anybody from Canada? I do and they are very pleased with their Healthcare. There is no doubt that we have the best health system money can buy. If you have the money you care what healthcare costs, but what about the man on the street.
Torn ACL,
It’s good to have a young liberal post here. You raise many issues which would take too long to go into the detail required. I can only touch on a few. I hate to invoke the past because it is one of those things that turn off young people since most of it occurred before they were born. Hey I felt that way too.
I had no problem with the Dems before they acquired (around the mid 1980s in my experience) this aggressive nanny state attitude, contemptuous attitude toward democracy (look up their sickening comments about the first elections in Iraq), adoring attitude to totalitarian states such as Cuba, China, Venezuela etc. (even Obama couldn’t stop himself from giving a shout out to Communist China in the SOTU) and a devious attitude about stating their positions. I never say anything about someone that doesn’t have some basis in truth as I see it. It is fair to say that Pelosi can talk like an idiot but silly to say the same of Obama for example. But if you are intellectually honest I assume you are even more outraged by the rhetoric of Dems who say things I would never dream of saying even to myself. I mean not only in the media but in my personal experience the political rhetoric I’ve heard from ordinary leftist Dems in casual conversation (going back to the mid 80s) is off the chart and sometimes really disturbing. Are you oblivious to that or do you find it no big deal because you agree with the position? Also, more recently under Clinton and Obama (and Bush 43 too) there has been an increasing level of crony capitalism and corruption (I don’t mean that personally with the Presidents themselves)compared with Dem Administrations of the past. Corruption is a greater problem in a big government system than with limited government for obvious reasons.
The Dems greatest achievement – minority civil rights (in cooperation with Repubs) was in facing down the segregationists residing in their own party. It was the Dems who historically were the party of segregation. This was an expansion of individual freedom, not something that demanded anything else from government or even cost anything. Unfortunately from that we got the 565 government departments and 5000 pieces of legislation that take away that freedom under the guise of “making things equal.” All of these grow government and don’t actually produce anything or even result in equality. Government should be an Umpire not the manager, coach, owner and play all the positions. Look at CA, IL and NY. These are Dem bastions run by leftists for years. Are you proud of them and their corruption and bankruptcy? If you are that’s great. We have 50 states. If the citizens of one state want to have high taxes high benefits high corruption and high unemployment they should have that privilege. They should pay for it themselves though. Look at the countries that have large autocratic governments. They have to loosen up to get any economic activity. I talk to a number of young people from other countries including from Europe. When I ask why they wanted to come here they almost all say opportunity. Even Europe is finding out they can’t afford their socialism.
To take health care, most Dems including Obama favor a single payer system. Why didn’t you quote from my second post where I said ” a more straightforward program might have been Constitutionally safer albeit even more politically unpopular. I would respect them more if they explained why they think single payer is so great and try to sell their views to the public.”
Instead they constructed something behind closed doors making all kinds of corrupt deals ( why should the citizens of one state get an exemption denied to the rest?) and ended up with a bill that reads like total gobbledygook. (Take a look at it.) If the bill is so great why are many Dem organizations that enthusiastically backed the bill hypocritically asking for waivers and exemptions? Notice that there is no fixed procedure and criteria for waivers it is merely “as the Secretary shall determine.” This is an open invitation to a system where health care and its costs are distributed by political payoffs and favoritism. Yes the current system has its flaws but since you are dealing with companies subject to law there are recourses and workarounds. But the government can’t be sued or threatened and in Obamacare the secretary of HHS is the law. A far more modest bill could address most of the issues.
Since you asked, the most recent example of a foreign leader coming here was the Canadian province minister who needed heart surgery. Even though those with connections in single payer systems like Canada and the UK routinely get to cut in line, even the expedited wait was too long for him.
Sorry for the dissertation but your post was long too.
Louis Stadlin, yes I do know Canadians. One was even an “undocumented immigrant” that hadn’t married his American girlfriend yet. There are many former Canadians living here, sometimes Canadian military, and Canadians have certainly been known to vacation in Virginia Beach.
Just because you know some that love their medical care so much they wanna go home, doesn’t mean I haven’t talked to complainers. It also doesn’t discredit my ability to read/listen to/watch news accounts of their system.
We need to fix our system, but they’re system is not the answer.
Defending the actual pre-health care reform system is a tough sell; that is why the focus is on extraneous factors, not the performance of the system itself, which in one word, is atrocious. We spend about twice as much on health care as most developed nations, and our nation is now so obese, prone to hyper tension, lethargic, and diabetic, that soon, we will need mercenaries to fight for us. Sure, the best practices do exist here; mainly for the super rich and members of Congress. Frankly, if you win, we lose as a nation.
@ Brit
That was exactly the problem. After the rejection, I appealed and it took 2 months to convince them to actually talk to a doctor before making the decision to reject me. Once the paper pushers talked to a doctor I was offered coverage.
And “undocumented Canadian immigrant” just sounds funny. We usually only here about those from the southern border.
@valentinus
In the words of John Stewart, just take it down a notch, for America. I might not agree with you politically, but that doesn’t mean I wouldn’t like to go to a ball game with you, or invite you over for dinner. Hell, if you’ve got an extra ticket to Sunday’s game I’m available! We can have a great discussion and even disagree without name calling, that’s all I’m trying to say.
And we’re all right, our system does need to be fixed. I think the current one is better than what we had 2 years ago. Its not perfect and it will be changed. However, challenging its constitutionality might not be the best play for Conservatives. It might score some political points right now but I think its a play to a relatively small but vocal audience and in the long run might be very detrimental.
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