Try not to be surprised...

[elfs]

You know that one judge who claims that the federal mandate in Health Care Reform requiring us all to have some kind of healthcare is unconstitutional? Despite the fact that two other judges have said the law is constitutional, it's Henry Hudson's ruling that's getting all the press. I'm sure he's proud of that.

Henry Hudson is proud of one other thing, too: "20 years of active service to the Republican party."

Try not to be surprised.

Comments

[featheredfrog.livejournal.com]

I thought the active service to the Rethuglican party was Ried's scuttling the public option.

Without that the bill is simply a windfall gift to Joe "sucks Aetna's cock" Lieberman and fellow-travellers.

[sirfox.livejournal.com]

I think it's little to do with actual facts, and more to do with perceived 'points'. Much of the GOP strategy for the last two years has been to stop any and every thing they can which obama might be able to take credit for. (the number of cloture votes called for to procedurally filibuster is record breaking and unprecedented)

The judge in question won't be the one who has to answer when health care companies go sternly to their recently purchased senators and congresscritters and wonder why they're not going to be getting a flood of new customers in 2014. If the judge's ruling stands, that is. Should be interesting to watch.

[tagryn]

I don't think that's relevant to whether the Commerce Clause's powers can be extended to force citizens to purchase health insurance, which is the issue before the courts. It's an open question, and a very interesting one in terms of whether the federal government has any remaining Constitutional limits on its powers.

[elfs.livejournal.com]

CHAP. LXXVII – An Act for the Relief of Sick and Disabled Seamen Section 1. Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled - That from and after the first day of September next, the master or owner of every ship or vessel of the United States, arriving from a foreign port into any port of the United States, shall, before such ship or vessel shall be admitted to an entry, render to the collector a true account of the number of seamen, that shall have been employed on board such vessel since she was last entered at any port in the United States,-and shall pay to the said collector, at the rate of twenty cents per month for every seaman so employed; which sum he is hereby authorized to retain out of the wages of such seamen. (US Fifth Congress, 1789, ratified in Congress and signed by John Adams)

That's not a law-of-the-sea issue; that's a law affecting shipowners in their own ports. It's the very first payroll tax, it applied across the board to a universal class of people, and it was for healthcare. It's one of those inconvenient truths that John Adams effected a mandated health care law.

[tagryn]

That was rebutted by Volokh here. To sum: The Act certainly did not order seamen to purchase any form of private insurance, nor did it order them to purchase any other type of private good. The Act is a solid precedent for federal involvement in health care, and no precedent at all for a federal mandate to purchase private products.

If the mandate was written to require employers to purchase healthcare for all employees, that would be a better analogy.