Thank you, Judge Posner
The chief justice, echoing Justice Scalia’s “broccoli” comment at the oral argument, rejected (as did the four dissenters, and so that is now the view of a majority of the justices) the Commerce Clause ground for the mandate, saying that to accept that ground would mean that “Congress could address the diet problem by ordering everyone to buy vegetables.” This argument, reassuring though it is to our obese population, confuses separate constitutional provisions. The Commerce Clause would empower Congress to order everyone to buy vegetables, because the market for most vegetables is interstate, but the “liberty” protected against the federal government by the Fifth Amendment would doubtless be interpreted to forbid such an imposition, just as it would be interpreted to forbid a federal law requiring everyone to be in bed with the lights out by 10 p.m. in order to economize on the use of electricity and, by doing so, reduce carbon emissions from electrical generating plants.
— Judge Richard A. Posner, on Slate, 5:38 p.m. today
Amen.
Justices Ginsburg, Breyer, Sotomayor and Kagan also made that point, in their concurrence today.
I’m thrilled to be in such exalted company.
Thare are too many lawyers who are all too proud of themselves. The net result, is that rather than find a way to subsidize those who cannot afford insurance, we have effectively nationalized one of the most prescious parts of our economy. The way the law is constructed, the natural course of events, will cause businesses to abandon supplying health care.
Having just spent the past two weeks in the dirty, disorganized, antiquated, canadian healthcare system, I see too clearly, what we are headed for.