Health Overhaul Is Dealt Setback
Wall Street Journal
August 13, 2011
A U.S. appeals court in Atlanta handed the Obama administration its biggest defeat to date in the battle over the health-care overhaul passed last year, ruling the law's mandate on Americans to carry health insurance was unconstitutional.
[You may wish to read the following earlier WSJ articles: * Employers Lobby to Weaken Insurance Mandate 7/13/11 * Appeals Court Says Health Law Is Constitutional 6/30/11 ]
The 2-1 ruling directly conflicts with another appellate ruling in June, making it a near certainty that the Supreme Court will eventually step in and provide the final word.
Friday's 207-page opinion and 84-page dissent made clear that views of the Obama administration's signature law have increasingly hardened in place as voices from each side roll out familiar arguments and precedents to buttress their opposite conclusions.
At the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit in Atlanta, the majority agreed with two lower courts that said Congress overreached when it required most Americans to carry insurance or pay a penalty.
The opinion, jointly written by judges Joel Dubina and Frank Hull, said Congress had broad power to deal with the problems of the uninsured, "but what Congress cannot do...is mandate that individuals enter into contracts with private insurance companies for the purchase of an expensive product from the time they are born until the time they die."
The Constitution gives Congress the power to regulate interstate commerce, and courts have interpreted that power broadly. But the majority said the Obama administration's defense amounted to an argument that merely by existing, individuals affect interstate commerce, "and therefore Congress may regulate them at every point of their life."
The court also raised federalism concerns, saying the mandate