Is health-care mandate constitutional?

Summary: The Obama Administration and Congress have proposed a new health care mandate stating that all citizens must get health insurance or be fined. In response many states have lined up to file lawsuits stating the mandate is unconstitutional. Under it, an 18 year-old citizen without health insurance would be listed as an interstate problem, such as a polluting factory. Many states are saying that it violates the 10th Amendment, stating that all powers not delegated to the United States by the constitution are left to the states. The last couple years, health care has become a national crisis, requiring a national, rather than state-by-state soloution. Although Federal Jurisdiction over health does not mean Congress is granted the freedom to use any and all means necessary to accomplish its goal. Rather, Congress would need to prove the failure of an individual to get health care creates a problem for interstate commerce. And to do this, congress has widely stretched the meaning of interstate commerce. Therefore, under this, an 18-year old citizen who has a car accident and needs medical care, it is the public that is likely to pay for it. So these acts by congress threaten the sancity of Federalism by congress instead of being decided among the courts.



How it relates to Federalism: This mandate threatens the original idea by the framers of the constitution and violates the 9th and 10th Amendment. It goes against a citizens right to privacy under the 9th amendment and states' rights under the 10th Amendment. The fact that the national government is issuing a mandate for healthcare takes away from the states' sovereign powers because the issue of health care is nowhere addressed by the constitution. With something like this in effect it only threatens to destroy federalism in the United States by giving the national government more power than the states.



Opinion: I completely disagree with the mandate because i do not believe that somebody else's issue of not having health care should rest solely on the public. It is every person's individual right to get health care rather than supporting other people's. I do not agree with the socialistic view this portrays and feel as though the federal government is getting to eager for more power. I believe that at the maximum it is a state issue rather than interstate commerce. This threatens the very existence of Federalism in the United States and takes away the states' sovereign powers, and gives the national government even more.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/forum/2010-03-31-column31_ST_N.htm