Obamacare

Let's pretend, for the purposes of this exercise, that we know for sure that the current proposal for government funded health care insurance is a great idea and that it will solve all of America's health care woes. Let's further pretend that we know for sure that fifty per cent plus one of American citizens approve of the plan.

Pursuant to which clause of Article I, Section 8 of the United States Constitution does the Congress propose to enact this legislation? Let's take a look:

US Constitution, Article I

Section 8. The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises, to pay the debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States; but all duties, imposts and excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;

• To borrow money on the credit of the United States;
• To regulate commerce with foreign nations, and among the several states, and with the Indian tribes;
• To establish a uniform rule of naturalization, and uniform laws on the subject of bankruptcies throughout the United States;
• To coin money, regulate the value thereof, and of foreign coin, and fix the standard of weights and measures;
• To provide for the punishment of counterfeiting the securities and current coin of the United States;
• To establish post offices and post roads;
• To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries;
• To constitute tribunals inferior to the Supreme Court;
• To define and punish piracies and felonies committed on the high seas, and offenses against the law of nations;
• To declare war, grant letters of marque and reprisal, and make rules concerning captures on land and water;
• To raise and support armies, but no appropriation of money to that use shall be for a longer term than two years;
• To provide and maintain a navy;
• To make rules for the government and regulation of the land and naval forces;
• To provide for calling forth the militia to execute the laws of the union, suppress insurrections and repel invasions;
• To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the militia, and for governing such part of them as may be employed in the service of the United States, reserving to the states respectively, the appointment of the officers, and the authority of training the militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress;
• To exercise exclusive legislation in all cases whatsoever, over such District (not exceeding ten miles square) as may, by cession of particular states, and the acceptance of Congress, become the seat of the government of the United States, and to exercise like authority over all places purchased by the consent of the legislature of the state in which the same shall be, for the erection of forts, magazines, arsenals, dockyards, and other needful buildings;--And
• To make all laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into execution the foregoing powers, and all other powers vested by this Constitution in the government of the United States, or in any department or officer thereof.
  

The most obvious answer seems to be that government funded health care is necessary and proper for the provision of the general welfare. So, we must, then, ask is government health care necessary or proper for the provision of the general welfare? Let's see what the authors of the Constitution have to say about what, exactly, they meant by this clause.

From Federalist 41, by James Madison, Father of the Constitution:

It has been urged and echoed, that the power "to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts, and excises, to pay the debts, and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States,'' amounts to an unlimited commission to exercise every power which may be alleged to be necessary for the common defense or general welfare. No stronger proof could be given of the distress under which these writers labor for objections, than their stooping to such a misconstruction. Had no other enumeration or definition of the powers of the Congress been found in the Constitution, than the general expressions just cited, the authors of the objection might have had some color for it; though it would have been difficult to find a reason for so awkward a form of describing an authority to legislate in all possible cases. A power to destroy the freedom of the press, the trial by jury, or even to regulate the course of descents, or the forms of conveyances, must be very singularly expressed by the terms "to raise money for the general welfare.

''But what color can the objection have, when a specification of the objects alluded to by these general terms immediately follows, and is not even separated by a longer pause than a semicolon? If the different parts of the same instrument ought to be so expounded, as to give meaning to every part which will bear it, shall one part of the same sentence be excluded altogether from a share in the meaning; and shall the more doubtful and indefinite terms be retained in their full extent, and the clear and precise expressions be denied any signification whatsoever? For what purpose could the enumeration of particular powers be inserted, if these and all others were meant to be included in the preceding general power? Nothing is more natural nor common than first to use a general phrase, and then to explain and qualify it by a recital of particulars.

So, we see that the limits on the power to provide for the general welfare are enumerated and expounded upon by the list of powers following the first general description of Congress's power. Then, is the power to provide health care insurance to the general public enumerated in the following powers? It seems we might make the case that Congress has such power over the citizens of the District of Columbia, but in all other cases, the 10th amendment must reserve the power of the purchase of health care insurance either to the States or to the People.

Therefore, Congress has no authority to pass this health care reform bill without the assent of three quarters of the States to a Constitutional amendment granting them this very authority. Some might argue, "If Congress has no authority to buy health insurance for all, then have they the right to buy it for some? If they have passed Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, then are not all of these programs under the same auspices as government funded health care for all?" To them, I would respond that these programs, too, are beyond Congress's Constitutional mandate, and they should be phased out and relegated to the States or the private sector as necessary. These programs have bankrupted the United States of America, and yet, the government seeks to spend more money - money that we do not have.

The federal government has demonstrated their inability both at funding health care insurance in the cases of Medicare and Medicaid and at providing single payer health care in the cases of Indian Health Services - a program that cannot adequately provide health care for 1 million American Indians. Yet we presume that the government has the capacity to provide health care insurance for 300 million American citizens. The citizens of industrialized nations with public health care flock to the United States for simple procedures for which, in their home countries, they must wait years or for which they may never be eligible. Who will provide health care to the rest of the world when our government destroys our health care system?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p-bY92mcOdk