Opponents of the health care plan signed into law earlier this year have finally found a judge to say that the "universal mandate" that is the centerpiece of making universal health care affordable is unconstitutional.
No big deal, really, at this point, since other judges elsewhere have ruled that it is constitutional. I won't belabor the point. I don't see a problem of constitutionality; this is no different from requiring people to have automobile insurance; if they don't, they pay a fine. In the latter case, by happenstance, it's the states that levy this requirement. But the federal government's powers, despite the best efforts of selective readers of the Constitution, don't rest solely on interstate commerce; and economic pressures would likely push most states to require health insurance even if the US government doesn't.
This decision, however, points again to the hyperpoliticization of our courts at all levels. Appointments to the federal courts have always been political to a degree; it cannot be otherwise. But once appointed, judges were once supposed to rise above politics to interpret law in a (more or less) unbiased manner.
Here, we are told, the Virginia judge appointed by Bush happens to be the one to declare the universal mandate unconstitutional, while other justices elsewhere who declare it OK just happen to have been appointed by Democrats. What's wrong with this picture? Plenty. Can it be fixed? I'm doubtful, when the Roberts Court itself has in recent years chosen to forfeit its credibility by exercising obvious partisanship in several key decisions.
It's been obvious since the health care bill was signed that it would be challenged, and would end up in the Supreme Court. With the current Court, there is little doubt what the verdict would be. Yet Supreme Court decisions ought not to be so predictable. Unfortunately, as the final paragraph of the above-referenced article notes, the fate of the health-care law in the courts will depend heavily on the political climate of the moment.
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