Supreme Court and Health Care

On Monday morning the Supreme Court will begin hearing arguments about whether the Individual Mandate is constitutional. On what case law the Supreme Court can base its decision? Lets look at the facts. In a recent New York Times article titled " At Heart of Health Law Clash, a 1942 Case of a Farmer’s Wheat" the author points out that a 1942 decision, Wickard v. Filburn, is the basis for the Supreme Court’s modern understanding of the scope of federal power. What was the core issue? The U.S. government had established limits on wheat production based on acreage owned by a farmer, in order to drive up wheat prices during the Great Depression, and one farmer, Roscoe Filburn, was growing more than the limits permitted. Filburn was ordered to destroy his crops and pay a fine, even though he was producing the excess wheat for his own use and had no intention of selling it. The Supreme Court interpreted the United States Constitution's Commerce Clause under Article 1 Section 8, which permits the United States Congress "To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes". The Court decided that Filburn's wheat growing activities reduced the amount of wheat he would buy for chicken feed on the open market, and because wheat was traded nationally, Filburn's production of more wheat than he was allotted was affecting interstate commerce. Thus, Filburn's production could be regulated by the federal government. The Supreme Court issued a decision which included the following statement: "The power to regulate interstate commerce includes the power to regulate the prices at which commodities in that commerce are dealt in and practices affecting such prices." ( P. 128) And this is the issue we are dealing with today! The Filburn decision illustrates just how much leeway the federal government has under the Constitution’s commerce clause to regulate the choices individuals make in matters affecting the national economy. If the government can make farmers choose between growing crops on their own land and paying a penalty, the administration’s lawyers have said, it can surely tell people that they must obtain health insurance or pay a penalty. Now, if the Supreme Court decides that the individual mandates violates the commerce clause then insurance companies will face a quandary: on the one hand they have to offer health insurance coverage to each and every applicant regardless of his/her health status, but on the other hand they cannot sell enough insurance policies to healthy individuals to cover for those expenses because the individual mandate was declared unconstitutional. The health care law will still be valid BUT the financing will be on shaky grounds. Therefore, insurance companies already began to develop alternatives which will include steep premium increases for individual policies! Economists believe that the mandate, as envisioned by the law, will make a significant difference in reform’s impact. Some suggest that removing the mandate from the law would diminish the number of newly insured by nearly two-thirds and raise premiums overall by 30 percent. The Rand Institute researchers predict that eliminating the mandate would have little effect on premiums for individuals. But they, too, believe that health insurance coverage would fall dramatically — from 27 million additional people insured to just 15 million. Those are just projections, but the experts note that one state has managed to impose insurance reforms without weakening its insurance market. It’s Massachusetts, which happens to be the one state that also imposed an individual mandate. More than 98 percent of the state’s residents now have insurance, by far the highest percentage in the country. Premiums in the non-group market have fallen by 50 percent, relative to national trends, while premiums in the group market aren’t rising any faster than they were before the reforms began. Lets hope for the best and I predict the Supreme Court will uphold the individual mandate. Yours Bernd