A U.S. district judge, Roger Vinson, in Pensacola, Florida threw out the new health care law today as unconstitutional because it violates the Commerce Clause. His decision rested upon the "individual mandate" requiring people to buy insurance, and from the way that mandate was written, in his opinion the entire law must be declared void.
He wrote that "I must reluctantly conclude that Congress exceeded the bounds of its authority in passing the act with the individual mandate. That is not to say, of course, that Congress is without power to address the problems and inequities in our health care system. The health care market is more than one-sixth of the national economy, and without doubt Congress has the power to reform and regulate this market. That has not been disputed in this case. The principal dispute has been about how Congress chose to exercise that power here."
So, what we have here is the whole problem in a nutshell. Because the judge isn't necessarily disputing what government can and can't do, it relates to how Congress did it. And that goes back to square one, which I think is a matter of interpretation. Because it seems to me that the president's mandate all along, real or perceived, has been to revise health care...and that's what he set out to do.
The first thing on his agenda was to introduce a new law, but as I recall the primary issue was to insure passage as quickly as possible. So, he created a situation that demanded legislation by a particular date but nowhere in that edict was there any requirement for either economic viability or even common sense. All he wanted to do was deliver a law by a deadline date.
So, what's happening now is people are finally reading and analyzing the bill, as they should have done before, and as a result, it's coming apart at the seams. And that means it'll have to be put together again. And next time around, maybe someone will actually take the time to really think about what needs to be done, and perhaps devise a sensible way to do it that folks can afford.
And I'm going to stop typing now, because although my books are fiction, I try to insure that this blog contains fact. So, when I start writing about government and "sensible" in the same sentence, I know that I've gone on too long and it's time to stop.
That's it for today folks.
Adios
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