Guest Blogger: Dr. Eric Novack on Mandatory Insanity

Dr. Eric Novack / July 16, 2010

The debate over health care reform has been a theoretical affair, full of abstractions that contradict one another. Amid all the ambiguity, one fact is unequivocal and unprecedented.

Under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, every American will be compelled to purchase health insurance, or else – the “or else” being a fine collected by the Internal Revenue Service should you fail to ante up.

“The mandate,” as it’s known, has its origins in the Commerce Clause of the Constitution, which grants Congress the authority to regulate interstate commerce. And yet it doesn’t take an Elena Kagan-level legal scholar (or even a fan of “Boston Legal” reruns) to see that the mandate, rather than regulating commerce, is this time being used to regulate the absence of commerce.

Why does that distinction matter? Well, at the risk of sounding alarmist, if Congress can compel the purchase of a product – health insurance – under its authority to regulate the interstate market for health care, then, using the same legal theory, what transaction can’t it compel? (more…)