Supreme Court on Health Reform
Has anyone been following the arguments the justices have been making?
How about this one, where Justice Roberts raises the question of whether or not the government could force citizens to own a cellphone for emergency use?
I'm not an expert on this stuff, but I agree with the points made in this article: "One Simple Argument Could Have Saved ObamaCare": http://www.tnr.com/article/politics/...acare-verrilliCHIEF JUSTICE JOHN ROBERTS: So, can the government require you to buy a cell phone because that would facilitate responding when you need emergency services? You can just dial 911 no matter where you are?
SOLICITOR GENERAL VERRILLI: No, Mr. Chief Justice. I think that's different. It's -- we -- I don't think we think of that as a market. This is a market. This is market regulation. And, in addition, you have a situation in this market not only where people enter involuntarily as to when they enter and won't be able to control what they need when they enter, but when they --
CHIEF JUSTICE ROBERTS: It seems to me that's the same as in my hypothetical. You don't know when you're going to need police assistance. You can't predict the extent to emergency response that you'll need, but when you do -- and the government provides it. I thought that was an important part of your argument, that when you need health care, the government will make sure you get it. Well, when you need police assistance or fire assistance or ambulance assistance, the government is going to get it.
Conservative justices, who care about the text, history, and original understanding of the Constitution, might have been persuaded by this argument about how the framers wanted Congress to be able to regulate economic free riders. And it would have provided a convincing answer to their hypothetical questions about why the government can’t regulate broccoli, or burials, or cell phones. Unlike affordable health care, the problems of providing healthy food, or burials, or emergency response are ones that a state can solve on its own without becoming a magnet to people from other states.
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Originally Posted by Jojan
