“Judge Vinson’s ruling has made it all the more pressing for Congress to come up with alternatives to the 2010 health care law. Abandoning the individual mandate and offering Americans a range of choices modeled after the Federal Employees Health Benefit Plan would be a substantial improvement.”
“There will obviously be appeals, and ultimately it will be the Supreme Court that settles the issue. For the time being, however, the federal government cannot enforce the PPACA against any of the 26 states who are parties to this lawsuit, or against the individuals and the National Federation of Independent Business, who are also plaintiffs in this case. Our task will now be to defend Judge Vinson’s excellent decision through the appeals process.”
“Liberal pundits who have consulted liberal law professors about liberals’ great achievement — ObamaCare — are pronouncing the ruling by Judge Roger Vinson to be much to do about nothing. The ruling is. . . um. . . thinking of a case liberals hate. . . um. . . just like Bush v. Gore ! (Except it has nothing to do with the Equal Protection Clause or any other aspect of that case.) It is, we are told, ‘curious,’ ‘odd,’ or ‘unconventional.’
These are complaints, not legal arguments.”
“As Judge Vinson took pains to emphasize, the case is not really about health care at all, or the wisdom—we would argue the destructiveness—of the newest entitlement. Rather, the Florida case goes to the core of the architecture of the American system, and whether there are any remaining limits on federal control. Judge Vinson’s 78-page ruling in favor of 26 states and the National Federation of Independent Business, among others, is by far the best legal vindication to date of Constitutional principles that form the outer boundaries of federal power.”
“There are four key components to Judge Vinson’s opinion: (1) a ruling that the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act’s dramatic expansion of Medicaid is not coercive to the states; (2) that the individual mandate exceeds Congressional powers to regulate interstate commerce; (3) that the individual mandate exceeds Congressional prerogatives to enact laws that are “necessary and proper” for executing its delegated powers; (4) that the individual mandate was essential to the functioning of other critical components of PPACA, and therefore the entire law must be overturned.”
“Judge Vinson’s opinion is laced with quotes from Madison, Hamilton, and the Federalist Papers. And because he believes that the individual mandate exceeds Congress’s commerce power, is without logical limitation, and far exceeds the existing legal boundaries established by Supreme Court precedent — because, Vinson argues, it cannot be reconciled with a limited government of enumerated powers and would remove all limits on federal power — he declared the Act unconstitutional.”
“The free-rider problem was caused by clumsy government policy. The solution to the problem, therefore, isn’t to add more clumsy government policy on top: it is to fix the original policy. PPACA’s individual mandate is not needed to address the free-rider problem. Furthermore, aspects of the individual mandate have nothing to do with the free-rider problem.”
“Today’s decision by Judge Vinson is another stinging defeat for the administration in its defense of Obamacare. Defenders of the health care bill had tried to paint any legal challenge as ‘frivolous.’ When then-Speaker Pelosi was asked by a reporter ‘where specifically does the Constitution grant Congress the authority to enact an individual health insurance mandate,’ Pelosi responded incredulously, ‘Are you serious? Are you serious?’ To wit, Judge Vinson offered a serious response, striking down not only the mandate, but the whole of the health care bill.”
“The 2011 National Physicians Survey, conducted by Thomson Reuters/HCPlexus and polling almost 3,000 American doctors, shows that while Obama are would raise spending, premiums, overall U.S. health costs, and debt, it wouldn’t raise the quality of American health care. Rather, by a margin of well over 3 to 1, doctors expect the quality of American health care to decline over the next five years, in the wake of Obamacare’s passage: Only 18 percent of doctors expect the quality of health care to ‘improve,’ while a whopping 65 percent expect it to ‘deteriorate.'”
“A federal district court judge in Florida ruled today that a key provision in the new health care law is unconstitutional, and that the entire law must be voided.”