On Healthcare Again

     So I am wondering now how our nation will fare in the wake of this ruling. Was Roberts a genius or did he fold to political pressures in fearing that if he completely struck down the mandate, that the Court was be assailed as hyper-partisan and so forth? Many conservatives are saying that the Court has now given the government a brand-new power to be able to coerce us to do as they please via the power of taxation and thus their striking down the ability to control anything and everything via the Commerce Clause is essentially worthless.

     Now I am no legal scholar, but this argument confuses me some. For example, many say that the purpose of a tax is to raise revenue, not penalize, and thus the mandate cannot be a tax, that it's a flimsy argument Roberts engaged in. For example, a traffic ticket is not a tax, it's a penalty. One example used by Roberts was the government using taxation to affect behavior such as putting a tax on gasoline, which conservatives have countered is activity you voluntarily engage in, not inactivity. The right also point out that a tax has to originate in the House, which the mandate did not, and thus technically, the mandate cannot be a tax (although this is disputed: LINK The thing is though, the "mandate," from what I understand of the bill, does function as a tax. The administration may have sworn up and down that it is not a tax (they argued it "was" a tax before the Court, now that it has been upheld as a tax, they are again saying it's not a tax, talk about politics!), and the bill itself I think claimed it wasn't a tax, but it:

1) Exists to raise revenue to fund the PPACA ("Patient Protection Affordable Care Act")

2) Is enforced by the IRS

So the only thing that seems to keep it possibly from being a tax as far as I can tell are that it is a tax on inactivity, meant to compel people into engaging in activity, not a tax on activity people voluntarily engage in. However, the thing is, as mentioned in my previous post on the mandate, the hospital system is required to treat people regardless of whether they have health insurance or not, and this is a law that most Americans want to remain in place. The only way to be able to make such a system sustainable is to have a special tax. The way I see it, one could have a tax which you either pay or that you can be exempted from so long as you purchase your own health insurance. This is part of what the PPACA does.

     The thing is, as a tax in this sense, it isn't solely a tax meant to control people's behavior. For example, it isn't the government saying, "Use Energy Star appliances or else pay a tax," it's the government saying, "We provide this service that you, the population, want to remain in place, so therefore to be able to pay for said service, we are going to levy a tax on you, and if you don't want to pay this tax, you can be exempted from it if you choose to purchase your own health insurance."

     While the ability of the government to use taxation as a means to control people is very bad, I think that the government in the end might have a lot of trouble implementing any such policy. The Court struck down the idea that the Commerce Clause allows the government to regulate inactivity, so now any such attempts by the government will have to be framed as a tax. The Democratic party and the Left in general may be partying right now over the PPACA being able to remain law, but, in the longer term, this could be a real roadblock to any attempts to seriously expand the power of the federal government. Any attempt to impose a tax to regulate inactivity or coerce people will give the political opposition a lot of ammunition to use (we see that from how this current administration has sworn that the mandate is not a tax and still is swearing such). I don't know if the government could try to implement such taxes by calling them a "penalty" or whatnot, or if they now would all have to be called a tax, but I hope that their having to be a tax will be sufficient to keep the government from seeking to expand federal power by excessive amounts.


     I must say that I do wish the Court had just out-and-out struck the whole thing down. It would have simplified things by getting rid of the bill outright. And I do not agree with those on the Left that were hoping that it would be struck down so as to make way for full-on single-payer healthcare, as I do not think the Democrats would have been able to get that implemented. As for those that would accuse the Court of having ruled in a blatantly partisan manner, I'd say let them. Their arguments I think would have been incredibly flimsy as it is difficult to argue that the Commerce Clause allows the government to actually mandate that people purchase something, that it allows them to regulate inactivity. I think many conservatives could have pointed out and explained quite clearly that the Court had ruled in a non-partisan manner had such a ruling occurred, and it would be the four dissenting justices, who ruled (even in the ruling that did happen) that the Commerce Clause does allow the government to do such things, that were ruling in a partisan manner.