The Commerce Clause and Obamacare Mandates

The Intrastate Commerce Act could save individual health insurance policy holders from Obamacare and its many problems.

Obamacare is expensive because of thousands of pages of regulations. This drives up the costs and makes the so-called Affordable Care Act unaffordable for many. Obamacare will control the choices of physicians by the central control of “evidence based medicine.” Patients will lose their privacy and be vulnerable to identity theft.

State governments can nullify these problems.

First our state legislators must read the Constitution, including Article VI, Clause 3, “The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the Members of the several State Legislatures, and all executive and judicial Officers, both of the United States and of the several States, shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution.”  They then must adhere to the oath they took to uphold the Constitution, not the Supreme Court’s faulty interpretation of the Constitution.

The Tenth Amendment of the Bill of Rights says, “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”

Most people reading the Constitution would be unable to find anything giving the federal government the power to control health care choices. However, this did not stop Congress from passing, the president signing, and the Supreme Court ruling the ACA was constitutional.

The Commerce Clause of the Constitution (Article I, Section 8, clause 3) reads, “To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes.” In NATIONAL FEDERATION OF INDEPENDENT BUSINESS v. SEBELIUS  Roberts wrote the majority opinion and said that “regulate commerce” did not allow the national government to force citizens to buy something like health insurance. He then wrote, “that the individual mandate must be construed as imposing a tax on those who do not have health insurance.” This curious conclusion ruled that Obamacare was constitutional because a mandate acts like a tax and is therefore a tax and the federal government has the right to tax.

He then said:

Our precedents read that to mean that Congress may regulate “the channels of interstate commerce,” “persons or things in interstate commerce,” and “those activities that substantially affect interstate commerce.” Morrison, supra, at 609 (internal quotation marks omitted). The power over activities that substantially affect interstate commerce can be expansive. That power has been held to authorize federal regulation of such seemingly local matters as a farmer’s decision to grow wheat for himself and his livestock.

Robert’s uses the words “our precedents” and “farmer.” These words refer to Wickard v. Filburn (1942). This Ruling greatly expanded the power of the federal government and changed our nation from a federation of sovereign states to a unitary form of government. Wickard changed previous precedents of the Supreme Court that ruled the Commerce Clause did not give our national government the power to rule the economy. Precedents are binding on lower courts but not the Supreme Court. It makes the precedents and can reverse previous precedents.

At the end of the ruling, Justice Thomas had a dissenting comment:

I dissent for the reasons stated in our joint opinion, but I write separately to say a word about the Commerce Clause. The joint dissent and The Chief Justice correctly apply our precedents to conclude that the Individual Mandate is beyond the power granted to Congress under the Commerce Clause and the Necessary and Proper Clause. Under those precedents, Congress may regulate “economic activity [that] substantially affects interstate commerce.” United States v. Lopez, 514 U. S. 549, 560 (1995) . I adhere to my view that “the very notion of a ‘substantial effects’ test under the Commerce Clause is inconsistent with the original understanding of Congress’ powers and with this Court’s early Commerce Clause cases.” United States v. Morrison, 529 U. S. 598, 627 (2000) (Thomas, J., concurring); see also Lopez, supra, at 584–602 (Thomas, J., concurring); Gonzales v. Raich, 545 U. S. 1–69 (2005) (Thomas, J., dissenting). As I have explained, the Court’s continued use of that test “has encouraged the Federal Government to persist in its view that the Commerce Clause has virtually no limits.” Morrison, supra, at 627. The Government’s unprecedented claim in this suit that it may regulate not only economic activity but also inactivity that substantially affects interstate commerce is a case in point.

The people of the states created the federal government through the U.S. Constitution. The federal government is a creation and an agent of the people. When the federal government exceeds its authority, then the people of the states have the right to nullify unconstitutional laws, especially when they are unworkable and detrimental to the citizens.