For much of this year, I was keeping track of the two dozen health care lawsuits wending their way through the legal system (see my chart maintained at Kaiser Health News) and this week, the Supreme Court, as anticipated, agreed to hear a challenge to the constitutionality of the health law.
Most constitutional lawyers believe the High Court will uphold the health law. See my colleague Stuart Taylor’s analysis here.
Among the issues at stake are whether or not the health law’s requirement that everyone purchase health insurance is constitutional. The argument in favor of the law goes something like this:
Every hospital is required to care for anyone entering their emergency room, regardless of their ability to pay. That means lots of people who can’t pay for health care, end up in the emergency room. To offset the costs of caring for the uninsured, hospitals turn around and charge all the insured more to care for them. Which means, those who have insurance are paying as much as $1,000 more a year in insurance premiums to pay for health care of the uninsured. If everyone were required to have health insurance, then everyone would share in the costs of health care and health premiums may stop climbing as quickly as they have over the past two decades. The law provides money to states so that those who have trouble buying insurance will get help. The purchase mandate is constitutional because health insurance is a regulated product that can be purchased between state lines. The Commerce clause in the constitution enables Congress to regulate interstate products
The argument against the insurance purchase mandate goes something like this. Nowhere in the constitution does it say that Congress can force citizens to buy a product
