MSNBC reports that Speaker Pelosi is scheduled to roll out the latest Democratic plans for a government-run health care system tomorrow morning at 10:00 a.m. While the secretive process in which it was written has ensured that nobody among the general public, media, or Republican lawmakers knows for sure what’s in the bill yet, questions are being raised about its constitutionality. For example, the Washington Times reported today:
“On top of all the other obstacles facing President Obama in his quest to pass health reform is this one: Does the U.S. Constitution allow the government to require uninsured Americans to buy medical insurance or impose a tax penalty if they refuse?
“Congress has never before required citizens to purchase any good or service, but that is what both House and Senate health bills would mandate. …
“In 1994, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office noted that a ‘mandate requiring all individuals to purchase health insurance would be an unprecedented form of federal action.’
“‘The government has never required people to buy any good or service as a condition of lawful residence in the United States,’ the CBO said. …
“Randy Barnett, a professor at Georgetown University Law Center, asks, ‘Where in the [Constitution] is the power to mandate that individuals buy health insurance?’ His answer: Nowhere.”
In a CBS News article highlighting the effort by the Speaker and liberal Democrats to change the name of the government-run “option” they’re rolling out tomorrow, Pelosi admitted that Democrats are “mandating that people buy insurance.”
Congressman Boehner recently told CNSNews.com that he believed “it’s wrong to mandate that the American people have to do anything.” Boehner said that “the more government takes from the American people, the more regulations it writes, the more mandates it provides means less freedom for the American people.”
And as Boehner told Fox News yesterday, it doesn’t matter what they call it – it’s still a “big government takeover of our health care system”:
Republicans have better health care solutions – as highlighted by both the Cleveland Plain Dealer and the Chicago Tribune – that will lower costs and expand coverage without adding to the deficit or imposing new taxes and mandates on families and small businesses. Read more about these solutions here.
READ MORE:
- Plain Dealer Highlights GOP Health Care Solutions (10/19/09)
- Boehner’s Economic Team Blasts Government Takeover of Health Care (10/14/09)
- Eighth District Voters Oppose Government Takeover of Health Care (10/13/09)
- Will Strickland Oppose $1B Unfunded Mandate on Ohio Taxpayers? (10/7/09)
- Boehner: Americans Want Health Care Reform, Not Spin (8/13/09)
Tags: health care
