The Individual Mandate: Ineffective, Overreaching, Unsustainable, Unconstitutional, and Unnecessary

The Constitution/Civil Liberties

The Individual Mandate: Ineffective, Overreaching, Unsustainable, Unconstitutional, and Unnecessary

by Thomas P. Miller

American Enterprise Institute

March 26, 2012

Policy Study

The strongest constitutional law arguments against the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act’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.

URL: www.aei.org/files/2012/03/26/-the-individual-mandate-ineffective-overreaching-unsustainable-unconstitutional-and-unnecessary_080931954931.pdf