Sunday’s N&O featured a wonder example of how the left and right approach the the Obamacare health care law. George Will provides a powerful legal argument based not on the commerce clause, but on contract law. Will cites the argument provided by the Institute for Justice (IJ) amicus brief.
The brief, the primary authors of which are IJ’s Elizabeth Price Foley and Steve Simpson, says Obamacare is the first time Congress has used its power to regulate commerce to produce a law “from which there is no escape.” And “coercing commercial transactions” – compelling individuals to sign contracts with insurance companies – “is antithetical to the foundational principle of mutual assent that permeated the common law of contracts at the time of the founding and continues to do so today.”
Yet this is a provision [the individual mandate] that the overwhelming majority — those with insurance — should support, for the simple reason that these people currently end up footing the bill for much of that $116 billion. As the government’s brief notes, “Congress found that this cost-shifting increases the average premium for insured families by more than $1,000 per year.”
Thus, we should forget about the Constitution and hundreds of years of contract law and force people to buy insurance, because that is the only solution the liberal mind can contemplate. Market based solutions such as those offered by John Goodman at NCPA are not discussed because the liberal mind sees every problem through the lens of government programs. The Constitution and contract law are just impediments to be ignored because they get in the way of their good works for humanity.