Constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act - Essay Example

?Constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act As the election of the next president of the United s runs full steam ahead over the remaining days of the campaign, the thoughts and questions of the voters tend to veer closer towards the campaign promises and speeches of the candidates that have a direct relation to their lives and what the impact of these promises and speeches may be. In this case, we have our current president, Barack Obama championing the cause of his health care system for all Americans which has been come to be known as Obamacare but is actually known as the “Affordable Care Act”. While he declares the act as the best way to give all Americans health care coverage, there are those who oppose the act based upon claims of unconstitutionality as the healthcare coverage as dictated in the policy seems to be highly dictatorial and non-negotiable for all those concerned. The U.S. Supreme Court has declared the constitutionality of the act except for a few passages that it declared to be “taxes” more than anything else. So my question is “If there is a questionable passage in the Affordable Care Act, how can it be declared constitutional and fair to those concerned? The president declared that he would not tax the middle class Americans and yet one of the penalties indicated within Obamacare for those who fail to comply is referenced as a tax. How was it possible for Congress to mandate a new tax within a new health care policy? ”. This is a question that I feel needs to be answered since Obamacare, as it has to be popularly known, affects everyone living in the United States regardless of citizenship and residency status. To begin with, the Affordable Care Act has had shady beginnings and a rocky start as a campaign promise of then candidate Obama to the American people. By promising to provide the people with a comprehensive health care plan that will cover every single person living in this country, he needed to come up with a plan that could actually work for all concerned. His people in Congress out together the Affordable Care Act under his guidance and direction as a fulfillment of that promise. The problem is that the Affordable Care Act has come under close scrutiny and legal challenges from most political and private parties who view the act as a form of dictatorship on the American people. With the legal challenges posed before the Affordable Care Act among the various states in the country, and the state declarations that they would not enact such a government empowering law upon the citizens of their state, the question was then brought before the Supreme Court whose judicial representatives decided that the landmark March 2010 law had a majority of provisions that could be considered as legal and was therefore constitutional in form and content. According to the U.S. Department of Justice (2012) the Affordable Care Act is a , “... comprehensive health care reform law makes health insurance affordable for millions of Americans and protects them against potentially catastrophic medical expenses.” By definition, the Affordable Care Act sounds like it will finally clear up the problem of health care coverage for most Americans since the law will force insurance companies to cover the illnesses of their policy holders and their family alike without the safety net of being able to refuse coverage for certain illnesses during certain situations, those who oppose the law say that this particular vision of the government pertaining to healthcare coverage will not work because the provision will force the insurance companies to eventually shut down as they try to cover all pre-existing conditions and current conditions of their policy holders regardless of company guidelines. However, everyone has a bone to pick with the fact that the Affordable Care Act has a clear provision that dictates upon every American citizen to purchase health insurance or pay a penalty for not having any coverage. Those who oppose the law claim that this is a direct violation of the constitutional rights of the people of the country to choose whether they want to be covered or not. According to the Supreme Court (2012). This particular clause is constitutional and does not violate any existing constitutional laws. That is because Congress has the ability to mandate such terms under their commerce clause powers. Under this particular mandate, congress has the right to dictate such terms upon the public, and the penalty that is imposed upon those who do not purchase health insurance coverage can be penalized for their failure to comply with the law under the constitutional taxing powers of Congress. This is the particular provision that has become the gray area for the Affordable Care Act. According to Mears and Cohen (2012), “In the ruling, the court decided the most controversial provision -- an individual mandate requiring people to have health insurance -- is valid as a tax, even though it is impermissible under the Constitution's commerce clause.” Since this particular clause, upon which majority of the health care act is based, was put into place illegally since it's author's violated the Consitution's Commerce Clause, one can argue that this area made the plan unconstitutional from the very start. After all, the government runs on a clear set of laws and a demarcation line of powers that prevents them from over governance of the people. This law obviously over stepped the boundaries and yet was still declared constitutional by the United States Supreme Court. Mears and Cohen (2012) explained the the Supreme Court believes that the American people cannot be mandated to purchase health care coverage. However, by allowing the penalty on people who opt not to have health insurance, the purchase of health insurance was transformed from an option to a government requirement instead. Cohen (2012) further explains that, “Nearly all Americans will gain new peace of mind—the knowledge that comprehensive coverage will always be there, no matter what their medical or financial status.” But that is exactly the problem with this law, it doesn't cover everyone who requires healthcare because it taxes those who do not carry health insurance.Negrin (2012) indicated that under the Affordable Care law as upheld by the United States Supreme Court, “The court's ruling upholding the main part of Obama's law means that people must buy health insurance or pay a tax up to several thousand dollars a year.” By mandating policy coverage, the government may have just priced health insurance out of the market for most average Americans who now, thanks to the controversial provision in the constitution, will think twice about seeking medical care that they badly need because they will be penalized for not carrying insurance coverage. Although the U.S Supreme Court has declared the law to be constitutional based upon merits of predecent cases and a clear understanding o the law as it applies to the United States constitution, there are still those who believe that the court decided the way that they did because they did not want to actually become a party to those who pushed so hard for such a critical law to be passed. Rather, the decision that they came up with passed the buck back to Congress, thus turning the discussion back into a political, rather than a judicial debate. However, those who celebrate the victory of the Affordable Care law seem to have forgotten that the law was not supported unanimously by the Supreme Court justices. Instead, the court justices issued 3 different rulings pertaining to the aforementioned case. Cohn (2012) explains that the decision of the court justices is quite telling and offers a peek into the debate that raged on within the United States Supreme Court halls. To note: “The justices actually issued three decisions. The four liberals effectively embraced the government's arguments in defense of the law. Four conservative dissenters rejected the government's arguments. The deciding vote came not from Justice Anthony Kennedy, who led the dissents, but from Chief Justice John Roberts. He rejected arguments that the mandate was a permissible use of federal authority to regulate interstate commerce. But he said that the mandate was effectively the same as a tax and, as a result, passed constitutional muster. “ With the Supreme Court clearly divided on the issue, it is quite clear that Affordable Care Law in its current form leaves a lot to be desired in terms of actual implementation. It shows that there is a margin of error within the decision of the Supreme Court that will allow for oen of two things to happen in the future. The law can either be repealed or implemented in its current form. It all depends upon the country votes for the presidency in November. Either way, it seems that the question on the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act has just become more a much more heated debate topic among all those concerned. The law was deemed constitutional by Justices Roberts, Breyer, Bader Ginsburg, Sotomayor, and Kagan. All five of these Supreme Court justices collectively believed that the Affordable Care Act was not in violation of any pre-existing constitutional laws because Justice Roberts explained that (Mears and Cohen, 2012) “It is reasonable to construe what Congress has done as increasing taxes on those who have a certain amount of income, but choose to go without health insurance," He also further stated that “"The federal government does not have the power to order people to buy health insurance. ... The federal government does have the power to impose a tax on those without health insurance." While the dissenting votes of U.S Supreme Court justices Alito, Scalia, Kennedy, and Thomas viewed the controversial law as“a tax increase by explaining that (Mears and Cohen, 2012). “To say that the Individual Mandate merely imposes a tax is not to interpret the statute but to rewrite it," the justices wrote in their dissenting opinion. "Imposing a tax through judicial legislation inverts the constitutional scheme, and places the power to tax in the branch of government least accountable to the citizenry." As of the moment, the U.S. Supreme Court has spoken and theirs if the final decision on the matter. The Affordable Care Act is constitutional and currently implementable in 2014. Whether that stand of the federal and state governments will change towards the arrival of that year will spell out the survival or repeal of the health care act. Sources Cohen, T. and Mears, B. (2012). Emotions high after court upholds healthcare law. CNN. Retrieved from http://edition.cnn.com/2012/06/28/politics/supreme-court- health-ruling/index.html Cohn, J. (2012). New republic: affordable care act is constitutional. NPR. Retrieved from http://www.npr.org/2012/06/28/155907155/new-republic-affordable-care-act-is- constitutional N.A. (2012). Legal challenges to the affordable care act. n.p. Retrieved from http://www.hfma.org/Templates/Print.aspx?id=24263 Negrin, M. (2012). Supreme court healthcare ruling: the mandate can stay. abc news. Retrieved from http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/OTUS/supreme-court-announces- decision-obamas-health-care-law/story?id=16663839#.UIRm_FEw9EJ The U.S. Department of Justice. (2012). Defending the affordable care act. USDOJ. Retrieved from http://www.justice.gov/healthcare/ Read More