(CNSNews.com) – Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) told CNSNews.com that the constitutional authority for Congress to require individuals to purchase health insurance is the same that allowed for Medicaid and Medicare, and for states to require driver’s licenses. He also said critics who suggest the health care bill is unconstitutional are making a “spurious argument.”
The health care bills in both the Senate and the House mandate that every American have health insurance. Back in September at a town hall meeting, Warner had also
said there is “no place in the Constitution that specifically says health care” or education, but “we have made those choices as a country over the years.”
On Tuesday on Capitol Hill, CNSNews.com asked Warner, “Does the Constitution give Congress the authority to mandate whether individuals should purchase health insurance, to mandate that they have to purchase health insurance?”
Warner said: “The United States Congress passed laws regarding Medicare and Medicaid that became
de facto mandatory programs. States all the time require people to have driver’s licenses. I think that this is a bit of a spurious argument that’s being made by some folks.”
“I clearly think, you know, there’s a policy decision that needs to be made but what we’ve got right now is a system where you’ve got a whole lot of folks who are basically free riders on the system who show up in emergency room doors, get treated, and get passed on to those of us who pay for private health insurance,” said Warner.
“That’s not fair or right in a normal market system,” he said. “The free-rider system that we have right now is not the market working fairly.”
In 1994, when Congress was considering a universal health care plan proposed by then-President Clinton that included a mandate that all individuals purchase health insurance, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) studied the issue and discovered that the federal government had never in the history of the United States mandated that individuals purchase any good or service.
“A mandate requiring all individuals to purchase health insurance would be an unprecedented form of federal action,” said the CBO. “The government has never required people to buy any good or service as a condition of lawful residence in the United States.”
In an analysis published this July, the CBO said that an attempt to justify a mandate that people buy health insurance by using the Commerce Clause—which gives Congress the power to regulate commerce “among the several states”—raises a “novel issue.”
“Whether such a requirement would be constitutional under the Commerce Clause is perhaps the most challenging question posed by such a proposal, as it is a novel issue whether Congress may use this clause to require an individual to purchase a good or a service,” said the CBO.
In a recent interview with CNSNews.com, Sen. Orrin Hatch (R.-Utah), a longtime member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said that it was “not constitutionally sound” for Congress to mandate that individuals buy health insurance.
“But here would be the first time where our [federal] government would demand that people buy something that they may or may not want,” said Hatch.
“And, you know, if that’s the case, then we didn’t need a 'Cash for Clunkers' – all we had to do is have the federal government say you all got to buy new cars, no matter how tough it is on you. You know, they could require you to buy anything. And that isn’t America. That’s not freedom. That’s not constitutionally sound,” Hatch added.
Hatch said that if we let the federal government begin forcing us to buy things we may not want to buy without having a clear constitutional justification for doing so, “We’ve lost our freedoms, and that means the federal government can do anything it wants to do to us.”
Below is the transcript of the exchange between CNSNews.com and Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.):
CNSNews.com: “Some Republicans have argued that the health care bill is unconstitutional. Does the Constitution give Congress the authority to mandate whether individuals should purchase health insurance – to mandate that they have to purchase health insurance?”
Warner: “The United States Congress passed laws regarding Medicare and Medicaid that became de facto mandatory programs. States all the time require people to have driver’s licenses. I think that this is a bit of a spurious argument that’s being made by some folks.
“I clearly think, you know, there’s a policy decision that needs to be made but what we’ve got right now is a system where you’ve got a whole lot of folks who are basically free riders on the system who show up in emergency room doors, get treated, and get passed on to those of us who pay for private health insurance.
“That’s not fair or right in a normal market system. The free-rider system that we have right now is not the market working fairly.”