A federal judge in Virginia on Tuesday rejected a legal challenge to the healthcare reform law, the second time the law's mandate that people buy insurance has been ruled constitutional.
The lawsuit was brought by Liberty University, which also argued that the law violates the First Amendment by requiring people to buy insurance that could cover abortions.
"I hold that there is a rational basis for Congress to conclude that individuals' decisions about how and when to pay for health care are activities that in the aggregate substantially affect the interstate health care market," ruled U.S. District Judge Norman Moon, a Clinton appointee. "Nearly everyone will require health care services at some point in their lifetimes, and it is not always possible to predict when one will be afflicted by illness or injury and require care.…
"Far from ‘inactivity,’ by choosing to forgo insurance, Plaintiffs are making an economic decision to try to pay for health care services later, out of pocket, rather than now, through the purchase of insurance. As Congress found, the total incidence of these economic decisions has a substantial impact on the national market for health care by collectively shifting billions of dollars on to other market participants and driving up the prices of insurance policies."
Again, all this is headed for the Supreme Court, and it will probably end up resting on the shoulders of Justice Kennedy. These lower court rulings are less important, but we are seeing a pattern now of judges upholding the law as constitutional under the Commerce Clause.
The opponent of health care reform are trying to just shotgun out lawsuits until they find a judge that agrees with them. It's a good short-term strategy, but not a good long-term one. Still, the argument by the right that the provision is "clearly unconstitutional" doesn't appear to be so self-evident.
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