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POV: Have Gun, Will Nudge
by Ayn Rand | March 1962
It's Not the Unions — It's the Labor Laws
by Doug Altner | March 19, 2014
Regulatory Strangulation
by Steve Simpson | March 13, 2014
Obamacare creates a new class of free riders
by Rituparna Basu | January 23, 2014
Obamacare Is Suffocating An Already Sick Health Insurance Patient
by Rituparna Basu | January 22, 2014
The Broken State of American Health Insurance Prior to the Affordable Care Act: A Market Rife with Government Distortion
by Rituparna Basu | January 21, 2014
Obamacare is Really, Really Bad for You, Especially If You're Young
by Rituparna Basu | August 21, 2013
Justice Department should let US Airways & American Airlines merger proceed
by Tom Bowden | August 16, 2013
Why Is Apple Inc. On Trial? For Good Behavior, It Turns Out
by Tom Bowden | June 20, 2013
The Forgotten Man of the Minimum-Wage Debate
by Doug Altner | June 19, 2013
Why Delivering Beer Isn’t Easy
by Doug Altner | June 11, 2013
What Explains GM’s Problems With The UAW?
by Doug Altner | May 20, 2013
What Are The Search Results When You Google ‘Antitrust’?
by Tom Bowden | April 18, 2013
To Protect the Defenseless, We Must Abolish the Minimum Wage
by Don Watkins | March 27, 2013
I’ll Buy My Own Contraception, Thanks
by Rituparna Basu | November 13, 2012
Why The Glass-Steagall Myth Persists
by Yaron Brook | November 12, 2012
Why Ayn Rand’s Absence From Last Thursday’s Debate Benefits Big Government
by Yaron Brook | October 15, 2012
Changing the Debate: How to Move from an Entitlement State to a Free Market
by Don Watkins | July 02, 2012
3 Things Everyone Needs to Know About the Apple Antitrust Case
by Don Watkins | April 10, 2012
What's Really Wrong with Entitlements
by Don Watkins | February 21, 2012
The Entitlement State Is Morally Bankrupt
by Don Watkins | September 13, 2011
How Important Is the Obamacare Litigation?
by Tom Bowden | August 12, 2011
Atlas Shrugged: With America on the Brink, Should You “Go Galt” and Strike?
by Onkar Ghate | April 29, 2011
The Road to Socialized Medicine Is Paved With Pre-existing Conditions (Part 3)
by Yaron Brook | April 06, 2011
The Road to Socialized Medicine Is Paved with Pre-existing Conditions (Part 2)
by Yaron Brook | March 10, 2011
In Defense of Finance
by Yaron Brook | February 15, 2011
The Road to Socialized Medicine Is Paved with Pre-existing Conditions
by Yaron Brook | February 10, 2011
The Avastin Travesty
by Tom Bowden | December 12, 2010
Apple Now Targeted for Success Like Microsoft Was in the 1990s
by Tom Bowden | October 04, 2010
The Un-American Dream
by Don Watkins | August 27, 2010
What About Private Health Emergencies?
by Tom Bowden | April 08, 2010
What’s Really Driving the Toyota Controversy?
by Don Watkins | March 26, 2010
Anti-Smoking Paternalism: A Cancer on American Liberty
by Don Watkins | March 06, 2010
Apple vs. GM: Ayn Rand Knew the Difference. Do You?
by Don Watkins | March 02, 2010
Smash the Labor Monopolies!
by Tom Bowden | September 15, 2009
America’s Unfree Market
by Yaron Brook | May 2009
Atlas Shrugged and the Housing Crisis that Government Built
by Yaron Brook | March 2009
The Green Energy Fantasy
by Keith Lockitch | February 25, 2009
Stop Blaming Capitalism for Government Failures
by Yaron Brook | November 13, 2008
The Resurgence of Big Government
by Yaron Brook | Fall 2008
The Government Did It
by Yaron Brook | July 18, 2008
From Flat World To Free World
by Yaron Brook | June 26, 2008
How Government Makes Disasters More Disastrous
by Tom Bowden | April 29, 2008
Life And Taxes
by Yaron Brook | April 17, 2008
War On Free Political Speech
by Yaron Brook | March 21, 2008
To Stimulate The Economy, Liberate It
by Yaron Brook | February 14, 2008
Exploiters vs. Victims in the Grocery Strike
by Elan Journo | January 30, 2004
Prescription Drug Benefits Violate the Rights of Drug Companies
by Onkar Ghate | July 24, 2002
Drop the Antitrust Case Against Microsoft
by Onkar Ghate | March 17, 2002

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How Important Is the Obamacare Litigation?

by Tom Bowden | August 12, 2011 | Daily Caller

What’s at stake in the Obamacare litigation? Much more, we are being told, than the viability of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act itself. What hangs in the balance, conservatives proclaim, is nothing less than the future of constitutionally limited government in America.

Back in January, Judge Roger Vinson held that Congress exceeded its constitutional authority by forcing almost everyone in America to buy health insurance (the so-called individual mandate). Now the U.S. Court of Appeals in Atlanta has upheld that aspect of Judge Vinson’s decision, while rejecting his conclusion that the entire statute is invalid.

According to a Wall Street Journal editorial, Vinson’s decision was a “constitutional moment” that may signal “a return to the government of limited and enumerated powers that the framers envisioned.” And columnist George Will says this case could rescue “Madison’s constitutional architecture for limited government.”

Really? Let’s suppose that when the case finally reaches the Supreme Court, the mandate is struck down, and the statute along with it. What larger meaning would such an outcome have, beyond the obvious importance of deciding Obamacare’s fate? Unfortunately, very little impact can be expected from the kind of desperate, last-gasp strategy that spawned the main issue in this litigation.

The Supreme Court will almost certainly be deciding whether the Commerce Clause — which allows Congress to “regulate commerce . . . among the several states” — authorized enactment of the individual mandate. Obamacare’s defenders can point to a line of Supreme Court decisions stretching back more than a century, construing that clause to grant Congress a blank check on power, authorizing control of literally every aspect of the economy, from agricultural equipment to zirconium jewelry.

This orthodoxy has been instrumental in allowing health insurance to become one of America’s most government-dominated industries, replete with tax-funded schemes to insure the elderly and poor (Medicare and Medicaid), “coverage mandates” requiring exotic benefits like acupuncture and in vitro fertilization, price controls on insurance premiums, tax laws that channel health insurance through one’s employer, and hundreds of similar controls.

What about the “government of limited and enumerated powers that the framers envisioned”? Regrettably, it’s nowhere in sight. Our Founding Fathers held that government has but one purpose: to protect individual rights to life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness. In that context, they designed the Commerce Clause as a powerful check on states’ ability to interfere with free trade, using the term “regulate” to mean: make uniform or regular. If, say, New York were tempted to erect a tariff barrier on imports from New Jersey, the federal government’s exclusive power over interstate commerce would soon squelch the scheme.

The Commerce Clause was never intended to grant Congress carte blanche to rule the economy. Under the Founders’ Constitution, a person’s decision whether to buy health insurance would be treated as an entirely private matter in which government has no say (except to redress breach of contract or fraud). Indeed, the entire Rube Goldberg apparatus of laws, regulations, and entitlements by which Uncle Sam and his state-level minions control American health care would be thrown out as unconstitutional violations of property rights and liberty of contract.

About The Author

Tom Bowden

Analyst and Outreach Liaison, Ayn Rand Institute