Lefties Explain Why It's All Good

Yeah, it's cool. It's all good.

From Rhymes With Cars and Girls:

This article about the constitutionality of the health care mandate has a ‘constitutional expert’ make the following rather interesting argument that it falls within the commerce clause:

Wake Forest University constitutional expert Mark Hall says almost every legal scholar he knows considers an individual mandate for health insurance consistent with Congress’ power to regulate.

“An individual who goes out and tries to purchase health insurance cannot buy a policy that covers pre-existing conditions or that asks no medical questions. Such a product is simply not sold in most states, and it can’t really be sold economically unless we require most people to have insurance,” he said. “So the requirement is really part and parcel of the regulation of the structure and conditions of the marketplace that would allow a very desirable kind of product to be sold.”

Boiled down, this argument asserts that (1) if a ‘very desirable’ (according to someone) product doesn’t exist on the market because offering it would be noneconomical, then (2) Congress can do whatever it takes to make it economical, and be within their powers as stated by the Commerce Clause (note that even the pretense of this having to do anything with ‘interstate’ is subtly dropped by this expert).

Here’s a ‘very desirable’ product, in my opinion: a million dollars cash per year, guaranteed, for life. I mean, all else equal I think most people would agree that they’d rather have this product than not have it. Alas, it would be noneconomical for some corporation to offer everyone this ‘product’ (because under the terms as I’ve just they’d be paying out a lot of money and not getting, well, any in return). Hence, Congress – per the Commerce Clause – can do whatever is necessary to make this product exist. Which in this case would basically mean Congress can confiscate any wealth above some maximum so as to give it to corporations as subsidies for the million-bucks-a-year-for-everyone program (the ‘desirable’ product we would like to artificially bring into existence). In other words, Congress can set up pure, equalizing, levelling socialism of a sort that the Soviets could only dream of. It’s all right there in the Commerce Clause!, according to a Constitutional Expert.

Here is another, equally-interesting argument:

And Yale legal scholar Akhil Amar said the fact that a requirement to buy health insurance would be enforced through fines shows Congress is exercising an even more fundamental constitutional power: its power to impose taxes.

‘Do X or we’ll fine you’ automatically lies within the Congress’s power to impose taxes. Fascinating. I suppose X can be anything and it doesn’t matter. It’s sort of like the Constitutional equivalent of ‘Jeopardy!’: as long as Congress phrases their diktat in the form of a tax, it’s all kosher.

Go read the whole thing.