My father-in-law is ill and has been hospitalized for a couple of weeks in Israel. Life expectancies in Israel are the fourth highest in the world (especially impressive given various populations that exist on the margins of the mainstream–Bedouin in the Negev, extremist Haredi sects, Arabs in rural villages), but it’s clearly not because of […]
Archive | Health Care
“The Uneasy Case for the Affordable Care Act”
Duke law professor Stephen Sachs has a new essay. “The Uneasy Case for the Affordable Care Act,” responding to Erwin Chemerinsky on the constitutionality of the individual mandate. Here is the abstract from SSRN: The constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act is sometimes said to be an “easy” question, with the Act’s opponents relying more […]
UCLA Law School Debate on the Individual Mandate Litigation
By Ilya Somin on February 28, 2012 2:42 pm in Federalism, Federalist Society, Health Care, Individual Mandate
This Thursday at 12:15 PM, I will be debating the individual mandate case at UCLA Law School with UCLA professor Jonathan Varat. The event is sponsored by the UCLA chapter of the Federalist Society.
Los Angeles Federalist Society/Stanford Law School/Libertarian Law Council Event on the Individual Mandate
This Thursday, March 1 at 6 PM, I will be speaking at an event on the individual mandate litigation with Stanford Law School Dean Larry Kramer. The event is sponsored by the Los Angeles lawyers’ division chapter of the Federalist Society, Stanford Law School, and the Libertarian Law Council. Location and registration information is available […]
Where’s the Contraception Compromise?
The Obama Administration’s January announcement it would not exempt most religious employers from the so-called “contraception mandate” sparked substantial controversy. The policy infuriated many religious groups, including some that have been otherwise supportive of the Administration’s health care reform efforts. In response to public pressure, last Friday the Administration announced a compromise designed to assuage […]
Administration Again Admits Individual Mandate’s Penalty Is Not a Tax
Testifying today before the House Budget Committee, Jeffrey Zients, acting Director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, acknowledged that the penalty provision used to enforce the individual mandate in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) is not a tax. Philip Klein has details (and video) here.
Briefs by VC Authors in the Individual Mandate Case
By Ilya Somin on February 15, 2012 10:45 am in Federalism, Health Care, Individual Mandate, Necessary and Proper
Regular VC readers might be interested in knowing just how many briefs in the individual mandate case have been authored by your humble Conspirators. In this post, I try to summarize all of them. Not surprisingly, they all urge the Court to strike down the mandate. Pride of place goes to Randy Barnett’s coauthorship of […]
Single Payer Advocates Who Want the Individual Mandate to be Struck Down
Among the many amicus briefs filed in Supreme Court on the individual mandate case in recent days is this one urging the Court to strike down the mandate, on behalf of a group of supporters of single payer health care. A few weeks ago, I wrote a post criticizing claims (usually made by left-liberal defenders […]
Our Supreme Court Amicus Brief Explaining Why the Individual Mandate is not “Proper”
By Ilya Somin on February 13, 2012 5:19 pm in Federalism, Health Care, Individual Mandate, Necessary and Proper
We have just filed an amicus brief in the individual mandate case that I wrote on behalf of the Washington Legal Foundation and a group of prominent constitutional law scholars. The brief is available here. The legal scholar amici include Steve Calabresi, James Ely, Steve Presser, and Volokh Conspiracy bloggers Jonathan Adler and Todd Zywicki, […]
Debating the Individual Mandate
Last week, I was a participant in the 2012 Fordham Debate at the University of Utah’s S.J. Quinney College of Law. The topic was the constitutionality of the minimum coverage requirement (aka the individual mandate) of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, and my interlocutor was David Orentlicher of Indiana University. For those interested, […]
Obamacare in Wonderland
By David Kopel on February 9, 2012 1:46 pm in Commerce Clause, Constitutional Theory, Health Care, Individual Mandate, Necessary and Proper, Taxing and Spending Clause
That’s the title of a new article by Gary Lawson and me, forthcoming in a symposium issue of Boston University’s American Journal of Law & Medicine. The Journal has a large readership among medical professionals who are interested in legal issues relating to medicine. Accordingly, if you have been following the VC’s debate on the ACA […]
Most Americans Want Mandate Struck Down
The Kaiser Family Foundation’s latest poll (toplines here) finds that two-thirds of Americans oppose the individual mandate and a clear majority — 54 percent — want the Supreme Court to invalidate the provision. Based on the poll of 1,206 adults, only 17 percent of Americans would like to see the individual mandate upheld. Another interesting […]
Independence Institute brief on Medicaid mandate
By David Kopel on January 19, 2012 2:30 pm in Constitutional History, Constitutional Law, Constitutional Theory, Health Care, Spending Clause, Tenth Amendment
On behalf of the Independence Institute, Rob Natelson and I wrote an amicus brief on the Medicaid mandate currently before the Supreme Court. (The ACA requirement that states must drastically expand Medicaid eligibility, or lose all their federal matching funds for Medicaid.) Here’s the Summary of Argument: By imposing the Medicaid mandates in the Affordable […]
Challenging a False Dichotomy: Socialized Medicine is not the Only Alternative to the Individual Mandate
Some defenders of the Obama health insurance mandate try to scare off opponents by claiming that if the mandate were repealed, the result will be a system of socialized medicine. Presumably, conservatives and libertarians oppose the latter even more than former. Such claims may have led conservative commentator Paul Rahe to argue recently that the […]
Is the Mandate Necessary?
John Goodman in the WSJ: ” There is nothing that can be achieved with a mandate that can’t be better achieved by a carefully designed system of tax subsidies.” Goodman’s argument is strengthened by the fact that the mandate, as structured in the PPACA, would increase coverage, but come nowhere close to achieving universal coverage. […]