Monday, November 02, 2009

On the constitutionality of the individual mandate

What will happen when the requirement that people buy health insurance is challenged in court?:
In other words, by its own express terms, if part of the Act is struck down, everything else survives. So if we find out, some day, that the individual mandate to buy insurance is unconstitutional, we're still stuck with all the other parts of the plan. Then what happens?

Has anyone promoting this bill even attempted to calculate the economics with the individual mandate excised? Are we going to have the whole lumbering system cranking into operation for years before we find out whether the the individual mandate is unconstitutional? Or is that the scheme? The individual mandate is too big to fail, and the courts will cave.
Whether or not the individual mandate is struck down as unconstitutional (which is what this blog believes) the Democrats' health insurance takeover will be a huge failure and cost trillions more than they're selling it for - just like every other big government welfare program has. In other words, once this thing passes, we're screwed.