Will Health Care Reform Be Repealed or Struck Down in Court?
Whether you like health care reform or not, I'm guessing we're stuck with the law for a while.
Can the recently passed health care reform legislation be repealed? Look at the Senate. The Republicans hold 41 seats in the Senate. In order to have the supermajority they'd need to get a repeal through the Senate without a filibuster, they'd have to win all 18 senate seats in 2010 where Democratic senators are running as incumbents and then they'd need the vote of Joe Liberman to make 60. When they got it passed, President Obama would veto it and they still wouldn't have the 67 votes they'd need to override his veto. If all of America comes to hate the new law as much as Rush Limbaugh, there might be hope for repealing if by 2012.
Will the courts strike it down? A number of state attorneys general have filed suit claiming that the federal government doesn't have the power to mandate that individual citizens buy something (like a health insurance policy). But under President Washington. the Second Militia Act of 1792 required a significant percentage of the U.S. civilian population to purchase a long list of military equipment:
[E]very citizen, so enrolled and notified, shall, within six months thereafter, provide himself with a good musket or firelock, a sufficient bayonet and belt, two spare flints, and a knapsack, a pouch, with a box therein, to contain not less than twenty four cartridges, suited to the bore of his musket or firelock, each cartridge to contain a proper quantity of powder and ball; or with a good rifle, knapsack, shot-pouch, and powder-horn, twenty balls suited to the bore of his rifle, and a quarter of a pound of powder; and shall appear so armed, accoutred and provided…
As another blogger put it, "This Act became law only a few years after the Constitution was ratified, in President George Washington's first term. Many of the Members of Congress who voted for the Act also were members of the Philadelphia Convention that wrote the Constitution."
I don't think the courts will strike it down. But I suppose we'll see.
© NCinDC
Health Care | Greg Cruey | 31 March 2010 |
