Fix Health Care Policy

Two Centuries of Religious Freedom Rolled Back

Since 1791, when the Bill of Rights was formally adopted, America has enjoyed the legal protection of religious freedom, enshrined in the U.S. Constitution. Today, 221 years later, centuries of progress in the protection of religious and other liberties is at risk of being rolled back in one fell swoop. The culprit: Obamacare.

As we all know, President Obama’s health care law will mandate that religious hospitals, charities, and schools abandon the tenets of their faiths and provide their employees insurance coverage of abortion-inducing drugs, contraception and sterilization. This anti-conscience mandate is but the latest assault on liberty Obamacare has ushered in. Its shock waves are reverberating across the country, waking Americans to the fact that our first freedom — religious liberty — will be the first to fall now that the federal government has unfettered control over the country’s health care system.   (Read the rest on The Foundry…)

Tags: anti-conscience mandate, Bill of Rights, Constitution, ObamaCare, religious liberty

I Don’t Care, You Don’t Care, No One Cares for Obamacare

One year ago, when President Obama signed the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, he proclaimed it would lower costs, reduce the deficit, and lift the drag on our economy. Since then, insurance premiums have not dropped; coverage has not increased; over half of the states have filed suit against the Department of Health and Human Services; and two courts have declared the legislation unconstitutional. Shouldn’t a year be long enough for Obamacare to secure a place in our hearts and minds?

Not when the bill is an unpopular, unconstitutional legislative behemoth designed to alter Americans’ relationship with the federal government.

Advocates of Obamacare were utterly disconnected from Americans’ concerns about the bill—most especially their concern that it violated the Constitution. Nancy Pelosi was surprised when a reporter asked what part of the Constitution justified a mandate on American citizens to purchase a consumer good or service: was this man serious? Her press spokesman later clarified, lest there be any confusion, that constitutional questions were not serious questions. (Read the rest at The Foundry…)

Tags: Constitution, Individual Mandate, Obamacare anniversary, unconstitutional

Countdown to Repeal: Ken Cuccinelli’s Court Battle Paved the Way for Congress

Long before the House of Representatives considered the repeal of Obamacare, Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli was leading the way to undo the law in the courtroom.

Virginia’s lawsuit against Obamacare has been a rallying cry for opponents of the health care takeover from the beginning, and Cuccinelli has vowed to proudly carry that banner to the end. He spoke to Heritage last year about Virginia’s case.

“I don’t think in my lifetime we’ve seen one statute that so erodes liberty than this health care bill,” Cuccinelli told us. “Certainly, we view our lawsuit as being not merely about health care. That’s actually secondary to the real important aspect of the case, and that is to protect the Constitution, as we essentially define the outer limits of federal power. If we lose, it’s very much the end of federalism as we’ve known it for over 220 years.” (Read the rest at The Foundry…)

Tags: Constitution, ObamaCare, state lawsuits, unconstitutional mandates, Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli

Video: When It Comes to Health Care, the Left Doesn’t “Worry About the Constitution”

Rep. Phil Hare (D-IL) voted for Obamacare. When questioned by his constituents to identify what part of the Constitution empowers the federal government to force Americans to buy health insurance, Rep. Hare replies: “I don’t worry about the Constitution on this to be honest.” We applaud Rep. Hare for his honesty, but his vote for Obamacare already proved he does not care if the legislation he votes for is unconstitutional. As The Wall Street Journal explains this morning:

“All human activity arguably has some economic footprint. So if Congress can force Americans to buy a product, the question is what remains of the government of limited and enumerated powers, as provided in Article I.” (more…)

Tags: $1 trillion new spending, Constitution, Individual Mandate, insurance premiums, ObamaCare, Rep. Phil Hare, Supreme Court, tax penalty

Outside the Beltway: State AGs Start the Road to Repealing Obamacare

As liberal groups begin plotting to spend millions of dollars to “sell” Obamacare to Americans in swing House districts, at least 12 state attorneys general are mounting an effort to stop Obamacare in its tracks on constitutional grounds.

At issue is the provision in Obamacare that forces Americans to buy health insurance or face an annual $750 fine. Richmond Times-Dispatch reports that Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli plans to sue the federal government on grounds that the mandate violates the Commerce Clause of the U.S. Constitution:

“At no time in our history has the government mandated its citizens buy a good or service,” Cuccinelli said.

(more…)

Tags: Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, Commerce Clause, Constitution, Individual Mandate, ObamaCare, States

Morning Bell: This Process is Undermining the Rule of Law

This week, NBC News and The Wall Street Journal released poll results that are disturbing but by no means surprising. The March 11th – 14th poll of 1000 American adults showed that only 17% of respondents approve of the job Congress is doing in Washington. And as bad as that number is, the reason why Congress’ approval rating is so low is even more disturbing: a full 76% of Americans simply do not trust the U.S. Congress. This was the lowest level of trust for any representative entity tested by NBC/WSJ.

It is no coincidence that these record low ratings come amid current debate over health care in Congress. Yesterday, former U.S. Attorneys General Edwin Meese III and William P. Barr released the following statement: (more…)

Tags: becomes law, Constitution, constitutional concerns, deem and pass, dodgy, former U.S. Attorneys General, Public Opinion, Senate Health Bill, unseemly

Slaughter Solution: Still the Senate Bill

The House Rules Committee will meet this afternoon to discuss what has been dubbed the “Slaughter Solution” to passage of the Senate health care bill. The precedent cited by Rules Chairman Louise Slaughter to justify the proposed maneuver (to “deem” passage of the Senate health care bill when in fact the bill has never been actually “passed”) simply does not support the planned manipulation of the House rules and may well violate the U.S. Constitution.

As early as 1933 House rules were interpreted to permit House acceptance of Senate Amendments in a bill simultaneously with House passage of a Resolution on a separate matter. But that precedent clearly included House concurrence in (or “passage” of) the Senate Amendments. The new maneuver planned for this week’s health care bill is not designed to be an up or down vote on Senate Amendments to a bill or a bill itself. Instead the proposed Rule will “deem”, or pretend, that a Senate bill that will never have been in fact “passed”, was instead “deemed” to have been passed. (more…)

Tags: Constitution, deem, house rules committee, senate health care bill, Slaughter solution

Questions of Privilege: A Possible Countermove?

According to the official site of the House Rules Committee, “questions of privilege” relate to “matters affecting the safety, dignity or integrity of the House, or the rights, reputation or conduct of a member acting as a representative.”

House leaders are poised to use a procedural tactic of questionable constitutionality to move the single most consequential piece of legislation in over seven decades through the House without a vote. Here’s the idea: (1) pass a rule to bring to the floor a “reconciliation” measure that would detoxify certain provisions in the Senate-passed health-reform bill, and (2) insert in the rule a sentence that “deems” the Senate bill to have passed the House.

As Stanford law professor and former federal appeals court judge Michael W. McConnell explained in the Wall Street Journal: (more…)

Tags: become law, Constitution, deems, house rules committee, ObamaCare, reconciliation, senate health care bill, Slaughter Rule

The Slaughter Rule: Yet Another Reason Obamacare Would Be Unconstitutional

As written, the current health care bill before Congress already is guaranteed to face serious constitutional challenges on enumerated powers, 5th Amendment, racial discrimination, and unequal state treatment. Now the White House seems determined to add a whole new reason courts will throw out Obamacare on sight. Director of the Stanford Constitutional Law Center at Stanford Law School and former-federal judge Michael McConnell explains:

“To become law—hence eligible for amendment via reconciliation—the Senate health-care bill must actually be signed into law. The Constitution speaks directly to how that is done. According to Article I, Section 7, in order for a ‘Bill’ to ‘become a Law,’ it ‘shall have passed the House of Representatives and the Senate’ and be ‘presented to the President of the United States’ for signature or veto. Unless a bill actually has ‘passed’ both Houses, it cannot be presented to the president and cannot become a law.” (more…)

Tags: actual vote, Constitution, ObamaCare, senate health care bill

The Nebraska Compromise and the Constitution

In a letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV), dated December 30, 2009, the Attorneys General of 13 States have objected to the so-called Nebraska Compromise that reportedly won the crucial support of Senator Ben Nelson (D-NE) for the Senate health care takeover bill. The deal is said to involve an agreement that the Federal Government’s taxpayers will assume indefinitely the full share of the costs that Nebraska will incur as the result of the expansion of Medicaid that is one of the Act’s effects. The result is not only preferential treatment for Nebraska but it also hurts the rest of us because the other States will have to make up the difference.

Such preferential treatment is constitutionally suspect; it cannot be reconciled with several important principles incorporated in the Constitution. The Founders would not have dreamed of taking a burden that all of the States should share and allocating it to only some of them. Likewise, they would not have seen the spending of taxpayer money for the benefit of only one State to be in the general interest. Instead, the Founders understood the notion that Congress can spend funds to “provide for the common Defence and general Welfare” to mean that the spending had to be for the general or national benefit, not for purely local or regional benefit. This understanding is reflected in veto messages from Presidents from Madison to Buchanan. In fact, the relatively free-spending ways of President John Quincy Adams contributed to his defeat by Andrew Jackson in the election of 1828.

The absence of an explicit prohibition on something like the Nebraska Compromise does not mean that it does not violate the letter or spirit of the Constitution. In particular, it runs afoul of the concept of the States’ equal standing that is incorporated in the Constitution at several points. Duties, imposts, and excises are to be “uniform throughout the United States,” (Art. I, § 1, cl.1), the bankruptcy laws that Congress enacts must be “uniform . . . throughout the United States,” (Art. I, § 8, cl.4), and the ports of one State cannot be given any “preference” with respect to regulation or taxation over those of other States (Art. I, § 9, cl. 6). In addition, there are limits to the conditions that Congress can put on States when they enter the Union because they do so on an “equal footing.” Then, once part of the Union, the States enjoy an “equal sovereignty” that can be taken away only in limited circumstances. Put simply, all of the States, not just 49 of them, are in this together.

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Tags: Constitution, Cornhusker Kickback, Medicaid, Nebraska, Sen. Ben Nelson