Constitution scholar and writer Garrett Epps lays out the case for the constitutionality of requiring Americans to "maintain a minimum level of health insurance." Well, for starters, it doesn't:
This snappy apothegm is the logical equivalent of saying that the Defense Appropriations Act "requires that every United States citizen, other than those who leave the country, engage in accepting a minimum level of protection by the United States military." The provisions of the Health Care Act provide a benefit. The majority of Americans, who already have health coverage (and seem, by and large, to regard this coverage as worth bargaining for) will simply see improvements in their existing health care benefits, such as an end to lifetime benefit limits and the right to include older adult children on their policies. A significant number of others who are currently uninsured will become eligible for government-funded health insurance.
There will remain a small but significant number of Americans who can afford health care insurance but choose not to buy it. But contrary to the sound bite above, even they are not required to "maintain a minimum level of health insurance." If they wish to keep their uninsured status, they may do so by paying an addition to their income tax bills--ranging from as little as $695 for an individual taxpayer to $2085 for a family of six or more. The claim that the government is "forcing individuals to buy a commercial product" is worse than spin; it is simply false.
He sums up:
The doctrine under which the Act is being assailed quite simply constitutes a threat to most of the significant advances in federal law of the past 100 years: federal pension programs, national wildernesses and parks, consumer protection, environmental regulation, and most particularly statutory guarantees of civil rights.
It's not coincidental that right now Ron Paul laments the Civil Rights Act and that Haley Barbour speaks fondly the segregated South, that anti-immigrant extremists target birthright citizenship, or that right-wingers seek to wreck the Constitution with an old-South style amendment letting states repeal federal laws. A decision to void the Act would furnish a powerful precedent for those who would "restore" a libertarian dreamland that never existed, and that for most of us would quickly become a nightmare.
The next year will be interesting. The U.S. might become a 21st-Century nation. Or we might remain the only developed country without this basic protection.