The following is a summary of legal arguments that two attorney generals say allows the US Congress to reform heath care.
Does Congress lacks authority to address the health care issue by mandating coverage? Some people believe they have a right to refuse to buy health insurance. Others see it as an affront to their basic freedoms in the Bill of Rights.
Two attorney generals from Ohio and Iowa take issue with the constitutional arguments being made against this new legislation. Under long-settled Supreme Court precedents, Congress has ample power under the commerce clause of the Constitution to legislate on health care.
Congress has the authority to regulate anything that affects interstate commerce “among the several States.” This is bolstered by the supremacy clause of the US Constitition, which explicitly makes the Constitution and the laws of the United States “the supreme Law of the Land” for all Americans.
Congress clearly has the power to pass this legislation if the health care affects interstate commerce.
Health care now accounts for one-sixth of our gross domestic product. The costs of health insurance pose fundamental economic challenges to the competitiveness of our American common market. Presidnet Obama has stated health care will bankrupt the nation if its costs are not contained.
Although nearly 16 per cent of Americans lacked health care coverage and the insurance industry was protected with pre-existing conductions and lifetime cap clauses, Americans pay about twice as much for health insurance as the other industrialized nations of the world do.
If the commerce clause authorizes Congress to prohibit the cultivation of marijuana for personal medical use because it has economic effects, as the Supreme Court ruled in Gonzales v. Raich, then surely it authorizes Congress to regulate health care
Are critics suggesting us that only state governments can address health care?
The “individual mandate” now drawing attention, but it mimics a law already on the books in Massachusetts — a law broadly accepted and never invalidated by the courts. The Massachusett's health care law was championed by Republican Mitt Romney.
And there is a good reason for the individual mandate When an uninsured person ends up in an emergency room needing urgent and expensive treatment, someone has to pay for it — through either higher premiums or higher taxes. An American who has health insraince, if fact, pay an extra $1000 a year to pay for the emergency room treatments of the uninsured.
That is also why state laws require many millions of Americans to have car insurance: a few irresponsible citizens should not be allowed to place the burden of their irresponsible behavior on the rest of us.
For those who contend that the states alone can address these kinds of insurance problems, their logic condemns us to an unsatisfactory crazy quilt of conflicting provisions and mixed results.
This is why our Founding Fathers rejected the anemic Articles of Confederation as inadequate and authorized Congress to legislate on matters of interstate commerce — and then made the laws supreme, despite any state laws to the contrary.
We live under mandates every day. Without them, society as we know it would disintegrate. Every criminal law tells us what we cannot do.
Sometimes laws tells us what we must do. Congress, for example, can require young Americans to register for the draft to serve in the military. Congress can require us all to pay taxes for programs like Social Security and Medicare.
The attorney generals suggest that instead of pursuing lawsuits, we should work to find ways to improve the lives of the American people and protect our four most fundamental freedoms: of speech, of religion, from want and from fear.
Richard Cordray is the attorney general of Ohio, and Tom Miller is the attorney general of Iowa.
This is why our Founding Fathers rejected the anemic Articles of Confederation as inadequate and authorized Congress to legislate on matters of interstate commerce — and then made the laws supreme, despite any state laws to the contrary.
We live under mandates every day. Without them, society as we know it would disintegrate. Every criminal law tells us what we cannot do.
Sometimes laws tells us what we must do. Congress, for example, can require young Americans to register for the draft to serve in the military. Congress can require us all to pay taxes for programs like Social Security and Medicare.
The attorney generals suggest that instead of pursuing lawsuits, we should work to find ways to improve the lives of the American people and protect our four most fundamental freedoms: of speech, of religion, from want and from fear.
Richard Cordray is the attorney general of Ohio, and Tom Miller is the attorney general of Iowa.
Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0410/35335_Page2.html#ixzz0k4kPLdKC
source: http://www.sodahead.com/united-states/florida-doctor-tells-obama-supporters-to-get-lost/blog-292428/
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