Free Republic

THERE’S PLENTY to be said as a policy matter both for and against the Affordable Care Act, but it’s beyond reasonable debate that it complies fully with the Constitution...[Snip]... The one provision whose constitutionality is questioned is the individual mandate...[Snip] That mandate, too, is constitutional. Congress found that the cost of providing uncompensated care to the uninsured totaled $43 billion in 2008, raising annual premiums for the average family by over $1,000. Suppose Congress had required anyone who received medical care at public expense in 2010 to purchase insurance for 2011 or face a modest increase ($750 per year) in...

...Today’s holding is problematic for many reasons. First, it is a novel holding that threatens to expand the taxing power extensively. It removes the taxing power from the representative branches and places it in the only non-accountable branch, the judiciary. Defenders of the law — from President Obama to Nancy Pelosi to Harry Reid — all insisted that the law they voted for was not a tax. Now, when it is off their desk, the court has retroactively declared it a tax, circumventing the public accountability intended by the Founders and recognized by constitutional law as the major check on...