Is the health care law unconstitutional?

Possibly.
That probably depends upon who’s interpreting the law.
Conservatives may point to the Tenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, the last of the Bill of Rights, which expressly grants powers to the states and the people that are not constitutionally granted to the federal government—states’ rights.
Meanwhile, progressives apply the so-called “Commerce Clause” in Article I, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution, the section that enumerates the powers of Congress. This side of the argument contends that because Congress is granted the power to regulate interstate commerce as well as levy taxes and fines—and the health care bill includes tax and fine provisions—then this new law falls under the “Commerce Clause.”
But is it really and truly constitutional?
The answer lay with the perspective of the framers of the Constitution and the founders of the nation.
In order to understand any part of constitutional law, and in particular the U.S. Constitution, one must study history and the people who authored the document. Their intent is ultimately the right way to interpret the Constitution; not the intent of modern legal minds.
This is known as strict construction. Rather than looking at the U.S. Constitution as a living document that changes with the times, circumstances, culture and needs of the people, strict construction regards the Constitution as a constant, stable legal authority that transcends the passage of time and changes in our socioeconomic environment. In other words, the Constitution is what it is, and it’s not what it wasn’t intended to be.
The only accurate way to interpret the Constitution is to look at it from the points of view of its authors and framers. What were their intentions? What did they mean? And why?
Through careful study of papers, diaries and other written effects of historical figures, we can piece together an understanding of what philosophies coursed through their veins and what exactly they were thinking when the Constitution was ratified on September 17, 1787.
A study of the period is also necessary to understand and appreciate the kind of socioeconomic and political thought that went into drafting the U.S. Constitution and infused its words.
The people of the new United States of America were predominantly either the rugged individualist types or those embracing the Age of Enlightenment and its concepts of natural rights, as developed by 18th Century philosophers John Locke and Immanuel Kant. Either way, most Americans of the time favored individual liberty and the freedom to self-govern. They owned property for the first time in their lives and were the first of their lineage to do so. Many carved an existence out of the wilderness. Others built fortunes out of nothing but their own sweat, blood and tears.
The point is that a character study of the people of early America reveals that they did things themselves; not merely because they had to for survival, but mostly because that is what they believed in. They did not believe in a government that could or would take care of them from cradle to grave. Even if that were possible back then, the people of the period would not have stood for it.
After all, these people had just fought a long, bloody war for independence against an overbearing, paternalistic government bent on running their lives down to the minutest detail. The last thing Americans wanted was for the United States government to assume the role of a paternal caretaker. They’d already been there and done that.
No, what America’s founders and the Constitution’s framers envisioned was a government that defended and upheld justice, protected and regarded individual rights, and respected the individual’s freedom to self-govern. Self-sovereignty was an important principal to those valuing liberty. No longer were men and women subjects to a government. Rather, the government was now a subject to the people.
No longer were men judged by their bloodlines and birthrights. No more was the socioeconomic status of a man’s father the fate and destiny of the son. And property was not the exclusive privilege of nobility any more. In fact, nobility no longer existed in the new America. Instead, men and women were judged by their deeds; not their pedigrees.
The idea of a strong central government, quite frankly, alarmed most Americans of the day; especially the notion of a government arm reaching into the private, personal lives of citizens. The rights of states and, most especially, the people were paramount.
In fact, so adamant was the founding generation against big, intrusive government that it even staged a “whiskey rebellion” just a few years after the end of the Revolutionary War to protest a tax levy on whiskey as a means to fund the back pay of soldiers in the Continental Army.
To understand the mind of the average founding American is to understand the context under which the U.S. Constitution was authored.
So, after having said all of this, is the health care law constitutional?
Honestly, I don’t know for sure. But I suspect that it isn’t. In fact, I gather that a lot of what the federal government has done to grow itself into the titan that it has become probably is outside the lines of constitutionality.
Our founders did not intend for the federal government to take over aspects of American life best suited for the individual to govern. They intended individual liberty to be preserved the way it was founded in 1787.
Today’s legal experts may interpret the Constitution by virtue of the current culture and according to their own political points of view. But they would be wrong to do so.
The U.S. Constitution was not meant to be interpreted by today’s standards. Rather, it was meant to be read, interpreted and applied by the standards of its founding.
And I doubt very seriously that government managed health care was what the founders and framers had in mind when the “Commerce Clause” was authored.
Interstate commerce refers to trade occurring between states. To regulate interstate commerce at the time of our nation’s founding was to (1) establish uniform currency backed by the federal government; (2) ensure fair trade practices, such as tariff-free exports and imports across state lines; (3) protect interstate transportation of goods from one state to another; and (4) defend the legal rights of individuals from entities doing business in more than one state. The intent of granting Congress the authority to regulate interstate commerce was to provide authority where individual states were in dispute or had none outside of their own borders. The “Commerce Clause” was not meant to give the federal government carte blanche power to make decisions for private industry or to force individuals to buy a product.
But that’s exactly what the new health care law does. It makes decisions for private insurance companies by requiring them to take on an additional 30 million policyholders and accept pre-existing conditions, while also forbidding companies from raising premiums to make up for additional costs incurred and the added burden to their profit-loss ratios. The law also compels the private citizen to purchase a product that he or she might otherwise not want or is unable to afford.
While progressives may contend that the law is constitutional because Congress is acting within its powers to regulate interstate commerce, history is being ignored. And history is the only objective way to accurately and correctly interpret the U.S. Constitution.
We cannot judge the Constitution by today’s standards. Rather, we ought to be judging today’s standards by the Constitution and the way it was meant to be enacted.
What we may want today doesn’t necessarily match up with the founding interpretation of the Constitution.
But, really, the purpose of the new health care law has nothing to do with constitutionality; it’s a power grab, pure and simple. That is all most federal legislation amounts to any more. The Constitution be damned, because power is more important than either the law or its heritage.
The authors of the health care law can rationalize the “Commerce Clause” all they want to fit it into their agenda; but at the end of the day, when all is said and done, and when one gets right down to where the rubber meets the road, this law is incongruent with the original intents of the U.S. Constitution.
History supports that.