Individual Mandate

Regarding George F. Will's March 13 op-ed column, " Necessary — and improper ": Nobody is arguing, as Mr. Will claims, that the individual mandate is constitutional under the necessary and proper clause because the law would be unworkable if it were not. Such a circular argument is base sophistry, and it is insulting that Mr. Will would attribute such inanity to federal judges. The real argument is that the mandate satisfies the clause because it is necessary and proper to realizing Congress's uncontroversial power to...

DOVER, Del. — Of the nearly 10,000 people in Delaware who self-identified as Native Americans in the 2010 Census, it's unclear how many, if any, will be affected a provision in the Affordable Care Act regarding Native Americans. The provision states that Native Americans, many of whom get free medical care through the Indian Health Service program, will not be exempt from the mandate requiring that all Americans carry insurance unless they are members of federally recognized tribes.

The most compelling sentences in the Obama administration's brief defending the constitutionality of the health-care law come early on. "As a class," the brief advises on Page 7, "the uninsured consumed $116 billion of health-care services in 2008. " On the next page, the brief drives the point home: "In 2008, people without insurance did not pay for 63 percent of their health-care costs. " Those figures amount to a powerful refutation of the argument that the individual mandate — the requirement that individuals...

I'm trying to figure out just where Mitt Romney stands on health-care reform. Obviously, so is Mitt Romney. In an interview broadcast Sunday on " Meet the Press ," I thought I heard Romney say he liked some aspects of President Obama's Affordable Care Act and would keep those provisions in place. Impossible, right? Romney's position all year has been that if he's elected, he'll begin repealing Obamacare on Day One . My ears must have deceived me. But when I checked the transcript , here's what I found: "MR. ROMNEY: Well,...

The individual mandate component of the national health-care overhaul law had its day in court Tuesday, as some Supreme Court justices voiced skepticism over its constitutionality. Robert Barnes and N.C. Aizenman reported from the hearing : Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, traditionally the justice most likely to side with the court's liberals, suggested that the 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act invoked a power "beyond what our cases allow" the Congress to wield in regulating interstate...

A federal appeals court on Wednesday upheld the most contentious provision of the health-care overhaul law , ruling that Congress can require Americans to carry insurance coverage. In backing the individual mandate, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit in Cincinnati became the first appellate court to rule on President Obama's signature domestic initiative. The decision also marked the first time a Republican-appointed judge has sided with the administration in evaluating the law's...

Of all the arguments being waged over the Affordable Care Act — or, as the Obama campaign now likes to refer to it, "Obamacare" — the one dominating the Supreme Court last week is perhaps the most conceptually trivial. The individual mandate requires consumers to buy health insurance in order to eliminate the problem of free riders — people who don't purchase insurance until they get sick or injured, or never buy insurance and end up passing the costs of care they can't afford onto the rest...

WHILE POLICY considerations will infuse the Supreme Court arguments Tuesday about the health-care mandate, the session will focus on this legal question: Does the Constitution give Congress the power to order all individuals above a certain income level to buy health insurance? This is the topic of the Supreme Court's second of three days of consideration of the health-care reform act. Twenty-six states, the National Federation of Independent Business and several individuals argue that Congress...

On day two of the Supreme Court's hearings on the Affordable Care Act, the justices were considering whether the law gives Congress the power to mandate that Americans purchase health insurance. As Sarah Kliff reports , some analysts said the oral arguments did not look promising for those defending the law: What a difference two hours can make. Going into Tuesday morning's Supreme Court arguments, there was decently widespread agreement that the health reform law's  mandated...

America is mired in three wars. The past decade was the hottest on record. Unemployment remains stuck near 9 percent, and there's a small, albeit real, possibility that the U.S. government will default on its debt. So what's dominating the news? A reality-television star who can't persuade anyone that his hair is real is alleging that the president of the United States was born in Kenya. Perhaps this is just the logical endpoint of two years spent arguing over what Barack Obama is — or isn't.

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney says that while he intends to dismantle the Obama administration's health-care law if elected, he will retain several key provisions, including coverage for preexisting conditions. In an interview aired Sunday on NBC's "Meet the Press," Romney said his health-care overhaul will also allow families to cover adult children with their policies through age 26 and include access to coverage for unemployed people seeking insurance.

Mitt Romney is under fire for flip-flopping when he declared that the individual mandate is a tax, after a campaign adviser said it was not. In a front-page story, the New York Times wrote that Romney's statement "prompted renewed criticism that he was willing to adjust his views for political expediency. " Bill Burton of the pro-Obama super PAC Priorities USA opined on what he called "Romney's ideological gymnastics. " With all respect, if anyone has "adjusted his views for political expediency" or engaged in "ideological gymnastics" in...

WOLFEBORO, N.H. — Mitt Romney said Wednesday that a mandate in President Obama's signature health-care law is "a tax," contradicting a position his campaign staked out this week and belatedly getting in line with many other Republican leaders. The presidential candidate said in an interview with CBS News that he accepts last week's Supreme Court decision, which upheld the legislation. The law's individual mandate, which imposes a fine on those who do not obtain health insurance, is a tax, the court ruled, and is...

Mitt Romney's presidential campaign on Monday rejected a Republican attack on the Affordable Care Act, repudiating a contention made in last week's Supreme Court decision that the law's requirement that individuals carry medical coverage amounts to a tax. The Romney team's refusal to invoke the word "tax" with regard to the individual mandate puts the candidate at odds with others in his party at a moment when Republicans are attempting to capi­tal­ize...

George F. Will [ "The consolation prize," Washington Forum, June 29] and Charles Krauthammer [ "Why Roberts did it," op-ed, June 29] claimed the Supreme Court decision upholding the Affordable Care Act (ACA) as a victory for conservatives, because the court blocked the "individual mandate" authority under the commerce clause while allowing it as a tax. Let me see if I have this right: Even though the ACA stands and the "individual mandate" will function as intended, this is a conservative victory...

Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., under intense scrutiny for his decision upholding President Obama's health-care law, is headed for an overseas teaching gig in Malta. "An impregnable island fortress," Roberts told a conference of judges and lawyers meeting Friday morning in rural Pennsylvania. "It seemed like a good idea. " Back in Washington, the legal and political worlds are trying to digest the stunning news that one of the court's most consistent conservatives had pulled Obama's...

If the Supreme Court overturns the health-care reform law's individual mandate — a decision that could come as soon as Monday — it won't be totally unknown territory. For Washington state, it would be quite familiar. In 1993, Washington state passed a law guaranteeing all residents access to private health-care insurance, regardless of their health, and requiring them to purchase coverage. The state legislature, however, repealed that last provision two years later. With the guaranteed-access...

Three days of Supreme Court arguments over the health-care law demonstrated for all to see that conservative justices are prepared to act as an alternative legislature, diving deeply into policy details as if they were members of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee. Senator, excuse me, Justice Samuel Alito quoted Congressional Budget Office figures on Tuesday to talk about the insurance costs of the young. On Wednesday, Chief Justice John Roberts sounded like the House whip in discussing...

The legal challenge to the Affordable Care Act, which I advocated as a law professor before representing the National Federation of Independent Business as a lawyer, was about two huge things: saving the country from Obamacare and saving the Constitution for the country. On Thursday, to my great disappointment, we lost the first point in the Supreme Court's 5 to 4 ruling to uphold the health-care law. But to my enormous relief, we won the second. Before the decision, I figured it was all or nothing.

The Supreme Court ruling on health-care reform was like Palm Sunday in reverse: First they crucified Chief Justice John Roberts, then, upon his ruling, they hauled out the palm fronds. "They" would be the various pundits, academics and others who let Roberts know in advance that if his court overturned "Obamacare," he would be revealed and remembered as a partisan hack. But then: Hosanna, Eureka and Praise Jesus, Allah and Abraham! Roberts, a conservative, devout Catholic who probably doesn't personally like any part of...