Those who continue to fight healthcare reform on constitutional grounds must be cognizant of what they are actually fighting for. They are fighting about the irresponsible’ s right to be irresponsible and not purchase healthcare insurance while ignoring the right of those who are forced to pay for the healthcare of the irresponsible who could have otherwise afford insurance. The premiums of the responsible are involuntarily increased. The taxes of the responsible are involuntarily increased.
Those that have a blind faith in the letter of the law in the constitution must realize that the framers of the constitution lived in a different time and in those times had many prejudices and problems we have since overcome. The founders could not have imagined cars, computers, medical procedures, and much more. They were wise in making the document fungible and/or amendable.
Neither should the founders be considered infallible. After all, that document for a long time considered me 3/5 of a person, did not allow women to vote, and had many other arcane rules. For much too long we have allowed corporate interest and other special interest to use the constitution to block policies that they deemed not beneficial to them. This must not be allowed as it corrupts the entire premise of the country going forward.
We must cherish the good in the Constitution. That said, we must not allow the document to be a restriction on progress beneficial to all Americans simply to protect the few whose interests are solely the continued pilfering of the middle class.
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David Katz, M.D.: Health Care Law: What the US Constitution Meant to Say
David Katz, M.D.
Director of Yale University’s Prevention Research Center
Posted: December 20, 2010 07:59 AM
Here is a passage lifted ver batim from The New York Times coverage of the decision by a federal judge in Virginia that the Obama Administration’s health care reform legislation was in parts unconstitutional:
"Thus far, judges appointed by Republican presidents have ruled consistently against the Obama administration, while Democratic appointees have found for it."
Richmond, we have a problem. The contents of the U.S. Constitution shouldn’t change when seen through a red lens, or blue. That the meaning of the Constitution varies diametrically when seen from the left or seen from the right is, in a word, wrong. It makes reading the Constitution sound like reading tea leaves.
In the case of the controversial provision — the requirement that everyone buy health insurance or be penalized — what DID the Constitution mean to say?
Almost certainly: not a thing! When our Constitution was drafted, health insurance wasn’t on anybody’s radar (neither, for that matter, was radar). Medicine was primitive; hospitals were all but nonexistent; long-term care institutions did not exist. There was no dialysis, no organ transplantation, no open heart surgery, no angioplasty. Acute threat to life or limb generally meant…loss of life or limb. And when the medical services of the day were required and of any use, the barter system took care of the costs more often than not.
One need not be a Constitutional scholar (and I hasten to note: I am not!) to know that the Constitution was silent on health care insurance for the same reason it was silent on inter-stellar travel. Such concerns were not part of the world in which the document was drafted.
So the Constitution is silent on health insurance per se. But it is not silent, of course, on government powers and their limits, and that’s where the controversial interpretations pertaining to health care reform originate.
The U.S. Constitution says the government can’t force you to buy anything. Or at least, it says something like that.
The states can force you to buy auto insurance if you drive a car. But, they can’t force you to drive — or own — a car. So, free will prevails! The Constitution is OK with this.
The state can’t force you to buy or rent an abode. But the authorities can hassle you interminably if you attempt to rest your head in just about any alternative place — just ask a homeless person in any major city. Let’s call this one a bit gray.
The controversy now is: What about health care, and the insurance that generally pays for it?
The decision in Virginia suggests that health insurance is like any other commodity, and the federal government does not have the authority to force us to buy it. Specifically, Judge Hudson stated that the government lacks authority "… to compel an individual to involuntarily enter the stream of commerce by purchasing a commodity in the private market."
The crux of the matter, then, is involuntarily entering the stream of commerce.
Alrighty, then; what about involuntarily bleeding to death? What about a case of involuntary HIV? What about involuntary meningitis, or heart failure? Few people I know volunteer for medical calamities. Medical calamities are, quite predictably, involuntary. And there’s the rub.
David Katz, M.D.: Health Care Law: What the US Constitution Meant to Say
