Health-care reform’s slow climb to the Supreme Court continues today with a ruling from a federal appeals court in Atlanta, which finds that the individual mandate requiring citizens to buy health insurance is unconstitutional. The Wall Street Journal reports:
“This economic mandate represents a wholly novel and potentially unbounded assertion of congressional authority: the ability to compel Americans to purchase an expensive health insurance product they have elected not to buy, and to make them re-purchase that insurance product every month for their entire lives,” Judges Joel Dubina and Frank Hull said in a jointly written opinion.
Interestingly, Hull was nominated to the court by Bill Clinton in 1997. With today’s decision, she (yes, Frank is a she) becomes the first Democratically appointed judge to rule against health-care reform since challenges to the legislation began. But basically, different courts are coming to different conclusions on the mandate, and the final say will rest with the Supreme Court. Everything until then is just suspense.
