Once Commentary posts it online, someone might want to send Attorney General Roy Cooper a link to Tevi Troy?s article, ?ObamaCare Repudiated?? In the piece, the Hudson Institute senior fellow and former U.S. Health and Human Services deputy secretary details the ?three devastating blows in quick succession? that have raised ?profound questions about the law?s life expectancy.?
The first blow: the 2010 election. Blow No. 2? The House?s vote to repeal the health care legislation. Blow No. 3? A pair of judicial rulings against the law.
The first decision by Judge Henry Hudson in response to a suit filed by the state of Virginia said that the so-called ?individual mandate ? the requirement that every American be required by law to purchase health insurance ? was unconstitutional.? But Hudson stopped there ? while he struck down the mandate, he ruled that the rest of the law should remain in place.
Liberals were unhappy with the decision, to be sure, and were quick to point out it was only one decision and that Hudson was a Republican appointee. Even so, they were relatively restrained in their objections, perhaps because they understood that Hudson?s decision itself was relatively restrained. Liberal blogger Ezra Klein, for example, said he found it ?a far cry from a world in which the Supreme Court strikes down the whole of the health-care law.?
If this were Shakespeare, Klein?s comment would have been followed by the stage direction ?Enter Vinson.? On January 31, Judge Roger Vinson issued a 78-page judicial avalanche of a decision in a separate case brought by 26 states acting in concert, citing The Federalist Papers, Madison, Hamilton, and the Constitution as part of his reasoning. In his opinion, Judge Vinson agreed with Judge Hudson and with the states ?that Congress exceeded the bounds of its authority in passing the Act with the individual mandate.?
But he went further, overturning not just the mandate but the entire bill. Using the metaphor of a finely crafted watch, he determined that ObamaCare ?has approximately 450 separate pieces, but one essential piece (the individual mandate) is defective and must be removed.? He made the point even sharper by noting that it was the Obama administration that had argued ? ?at least 14 times in its motion? ? how crucial the mandate was to the working of the law. He also made clear that ?this case is not about whether the Act is wise or unwise legislation. It is about the Constitutional role of the federal government.?
Before Cooper took his public stance against enforcing House Bill 2, the General Assembly?s effort to exempt North Carolinians from ObamaCare?s individual health insurance mandate, John Hood discussed the implications of the Vinson ruling with Donna Martinez for Carolina Journal Radio.
