• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Galen Institute

A not-for-profit health and tax policy research organization.

  • Home
  • About Us
    • Mission and History
    • Officers and Trustees
    • Scholars and Staff
    • Who was Galen?
  • Activities
    • Core Activities
    • State Leaders Calls
    • Commentary and Oped Tutorial
    • Our Book
    • Galen Guides
  • Donate
  • Contact Us
  • Major Papers
  • Broadcast Interviews

Tom Miller: The individual mandate: ineffective, overreaching, unsustainable, unconstitutional and unnecessary

POSTED BY Galen Institute on March 23, 2012.

Whether or not the individual mandate in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) proves to be constitutionally valid, it is based on mistaken premises, faulty economic analysis, short-sighted politics, and seriously flawed health policy. The relationship between the mandate and the problems it purportedly could solve always has been tenuous and contradictory at best. Opponents find the mandate to be constitutionally improper, administratively challenging, politically implausible, and economically unnecessary.

The strongest constitutional law arguments against the PPACA’s individual mandate begin with the essential point that it is unprecedented and not bound by any limiting principle. It seriously threatens the concept that enumerated powers under the Constitution set some limits on the scope of permissible federal authority. The mandate also threatens to encroach on the traditional police powers reserved for state governments and may or may not be “necessary” to carry out and enforce other federal insurance regulation authorized under the new health law. But it is even less likely to be “proper” in accordance with ordinary means of execution and the letter and spirit of the Constitution’s structure that assigns powers among the federal government, the states, and the people.

Continue reading on AEI…

Filed Under: Uncategorized

Primary Sidebar

NEW – OF INTEREST

Health Care Choices 20/20:

A Vision for the Future


See the latest interview of Grace-Marie Turner on C-SPAN

SEARCH

LATEST NEWSLETTER ISSUES

SUBSCRIBE

Social Media

Like Us On Facebook

Twitter: @galeninstitute

 

Copyright Galen Institute, Inc © 2021; · Log in