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tazzygirl -> Anyone paying attention to Atlanta? (6/14/2011 11:38:47 PM)
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The health care law is being debated in Atlanta, which heard arguments on June 7th.
The U.S. Court of Appeals in Atlanta is a panel of three judges, two appointed by Republican Presidents, one by a Democratic one.
Thats not even the interesting part.
At issue is a provision of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act that requires most Americans to have health insurance starting in 2014.
“The question you have before you is that everyone is consuming the goods, it’s about failure to pay,” Acting U.S. Solicitor General Neal Katyal told the panel today.
“The Commerce Clause only gives Congress the power to regulate, not to compel,” states’ attorney Paul D. Clement, a solicitor general under President George W. Bush, told the court later.
Katyal told judges Dubina, Frank M. Hull and Stanley Marcus that no previous case addressed the questions before the court. Asked by the panel whether there were any limits on Congress’s power to regulate commerce under the U.S. Constitution, he said there were, without specifying.
The judges today questioned Katyal about the government’s legal position and frequently interrupted Clement’s argument as well.
“Are there any limits” on Congress’s power to compel people to act? Dubina asked the Justice Department’s lawyer.
“Absolutely,” Katyal replied. “We are not saying that Congress can force somebody to buy something and that failure to do so is economic activity.”
“People are seeking that good already,” he said of health care. The acting solicitor general said $43 billion is spent annually on care for the uninsured. “That’s quintessentially economic,” he said.
Clement told the court the issue boils down to whether the federal government can regulate the individual.
“For 220 years, Congress never saw fit to exercise that power,” he said, adding later, “The whole reason we do this is to protect individual liberty.”
Clement said the Commerce Clause was created to regulate people engaged in commercial activity, not to force them to engage.
Katyal argued that the states’ lawyers were “looking at the wrong side” of the transaction.
“Someone else picks up the tab when you don’t have insurance,” the government lawyer said, “that’s why it’s activity.”
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-06-08/health-care-law-must-stand-u-s-tells-third-appeals-court-in-atlanta.html
I have not thought about it in that regard before.
Thoughts?
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