Endorsing one thing, but not Gunner Arkansas News
By John Brummett
May the federal government force you to acquire health insurance and fine you through the income-tax system if you disobey?
I strongly suspect the eventual legal answer will be “yes,” but that the discussion along the way will be worthy.
First, let’s establish how this question differs from standard ones to which it has been mistakenly likened:
1. This is not like the old segregationists’ interdiction efforts of the 1950s whereby racist Southern political demagogues stood in school-house doors, literally and figuratively, to assert bogus states’ rights authority by which their states didn’t have to abide by federal law on school integration. This isn’t a general state’s rights argument, but a narrow one not ever directly litigated and specific to this kind of federal presumption.
2. This is not like government ordering you to buy car insurance and fasten your seat belt. Those are state edicts, not federal ones. You only need to comply if you exercise the privilege of moving an automobile over public roads. Here, the federal government is making a direct order that you must go get health insurance whether you’re sick or not or intend to go to the doctor or not.
