In a widely read recent New Yorker article, Ezra Klein argues that both the rise of conservative opposition to the individual mandate and the greater than expected success of the constitutional challenges to the law is largely a result of “motivated reasoning”: On March 23, 2010, the day that President Obama signed the Affordable Care […]
Archive | Health Care
Recent Poll of Supreme Court Experts Finds that Most Expect the Court to Strike Down the Individual Mandate
A June poll of Supreme Court experts finds that, on average, they predict a 57% chance that the Court will strike down the individual mandate: A new insider survey of 58 legal experts conducted after the oral arguments concluded found that most predict that the court will strike down the so-called individual mandate, a central […]
How Much Does the Individual Mandate Case Matter?
Co-blogger Orin Kerr asks an important question. How much effect will the individual mandate decision really have? To some extent, we can’t really know. It depends in part on the Supreme Court’s reasoning in upholding or striking down the mandate, and also on future political developments, including who gets to make the next several appointments […]
Health Care Cases Update
I am right now following the Supreme Court’s announcement of the opinions to be issued today. If the health care cases are among those that come out, I will post an analysis as quickly as possible. Stay tuned…. UPDATE: The Court has finished announcing opinions, and the health care cases were not among them. Neither […]
The Other Big Health Care Case Before the Supreme Court
With all the hoopla surrounding the individual mandate case, the media and most commentators have often given short shrift to the other big health care case the Supreme Court is about to decide: the constitutionality of the Obamacare’s massive expansion of Medicaid. Constitutional law scholar David Oedel recently posted this interesting article on the subject, […]
Researchers Whose Work Was Cited to Justify Bloomberg’s Large Soda Ban Explain Why it Won’t Work
In trying to justify his proposed regulation banning large-size sodas, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg cited the work of economists Brian Wansink and David Just. In this recent Atlantic article, Wansink and Just explain that he got their work wrong: New York City’s mayor proposed a restaurant ban for any soft drink over 16-ounces. The […]
Do Government Subsidies for Health Care Justify Paternalistic Soda Pop Regulations?
NYU law professor Rick Hills argues that New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s ban on large soda pop servings is justified by the existence of government subsidies for health care: I am inclined to think that denouncing Bloomberg’s proposal as Orwellian is like ridiculing the Food, Drug, & Cosmetic Act as a Stalinist plot or attacking […]
The Broccoli Argument Isn’t About Broccoli
Yesterday’s New York Times has an interesting article about how the broccoli mandate analogy came to play a major role in the cases challenging the constitutionality of the Obamacare individual health insurance mandate. It traces the analogy back to various libertarian and conservative sources and suggests that broccoli is a key reason why the mandate […]
Making the Case for Organ Markets
New Zealand economist Eric Crampton recently posted an interesting interview on organ markets that he did with Radio New Zealand. Like the United States, New Zealand faces a shortage of organs available for transplant, as a result of which many people die before appropriate organs can be found for them. Crampton describes several types of […]
Origins of Commerce Clause Objections to the Individual Mandate
As noted previously on this blog, Democrats in Congress essentially ignored plausible constitutional objections to the ACA’s individual mandate, and therefore have only themselves to blame if the law is declared unconstitutional. A counter-meme has spread on the liberal/left that constitutional objections to the ACA’s individual mandate were somehow invented circa late 2009, whereas previously […]
New Poll Showing that 68 Percent of the Public Want the Court to Strike Down the Individual Mandate
As co-blogger Jonathan Adler points out, a new New York Times-CBS poll shows that 68% of the public want the Supreme Court to rule that the individual health insurance mandate is unconstitutional, while 41% want it to invalidate the entire Obama health care reform law. Only 24% want the mandate upheld. Even a slight 48-42 […]
Health Care Reform Costing College Students
How should college students feel about health care reform? The WSJ reports some colleges and universities have dropped student insurance plans or hiked premiums. (More from Peter Suderman.) Perhaps it’s some consolation that the law makes it easier for parents to keep their children on their health plans — they might have to if they […]
NYT/CBS Poll: Over Two-Thirds Want Mandate Struck Down
The flurry of commentary suggesting the Supreme Court would provoke a popular backlash were it to strike down the individual mandate does not appear to have affected the populace. In a new NYT/CBS poll over two-thirds of respondents said they wanted some or all of the health care reform law struck down. Specifically, 41 percent […]
Andrew Koppelman on the Origins of the Case Against the Individual Mandate
By Ilya Somin on May 31, 2012 2:32 pm in Commerce Clause, Federalism, Health Care, Individual Mandate
Northwestern University Law Professor Andrew Koppelman has an article in Salon on the origins of the case against the individual mandate, in which he tries to show that Democrats could not reasonably have anticipated that the mandate would run into legal problems, and therefore cannot be blamed for not being more careful in the way […]
Should Courts Only Strike Down Laws as Unconstitutional if “People of All Political Persuasions” Agree?
In his most recent article defending the constitutionality of the individual mandate, Jeffrey Rosen claims that “[judicial] restraint requires deference to all laws passed by Congress and the states, regardless of whether they’re favored by liberals or conservatives, unless they violate principles that can be so clearly located in constitutional text and history that people […]