Obamacare has little to do with health care. It is something else, altogether. As an article in The American Thinker so succinctly phrases it, “The legislation is a disgusting and tyrannical seizure of liberty from private business and the American individual.” Those liberties are prescribed in, and to some extent protected by, the U.S. Constitution. Which ones are violated? Well, it could be argued that just about every one of them, everything that follows the words “We the People.” Let’s take a look at a few. . .
(1) Clearly, the abortion coverage and the contraception mandates do infringe upon freedom of religion (1st Amendment), and are the focus of a number of current lawsuits brought by the University of Notre Dame, Franciscan University of Steubenville, and dozens of Catholic hospitals and organizations, including Priests for Life, The Archdiocese of New York, the Archdiocese of Washington, D.C., and various individual dioceses across the country, all of whom have filed some 43 lawsuits against Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and the Obama administration.
(2) Some businesses, which do not fall under the "religious employer" exemption, are seeking relief from the contraception coverage mandate (again, a 1st Amendment issue) because it is against the owner's religious beliefs. The following two cases are examples of corporate challenges currently winding their way through the court system . . . Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc. et al., v. Sebelius – U.S. District Court, 10th Circuit, in Oklahoma City, filed Sept. 12, 2012 . . . Conestoga Wood Specialties Corporation v. Sebelius – U.S. District Court, 3rd Circuit, in Philadelphia, filed Dec. 4, 2012
(3) Doctors having the ability to ask about firearms ownership and include your response in your "medical history" that is stored on-line and shared with the HHS bureaucracy infringes upon the freedom of thought and speech (1st Amendment) and upon the right to bear arms - that "shall not be infringed." (2nd Amendment).
(4) The Federal government (HHS/IRS) having full access to your bank account against your will, to make sure that you are paying your Obamacare premiums, infringes upon your right to be secure in your person, papers, and effects, as do unreasonable searches into personal health insurance records; Anyone familiar with financial matters knows that a prospectus is required before someone purchases anything, but to find out about Obamacare you have to give them all your personal information . . . Instead of being able to read what Financial Health Plans they are offering you must disclose who you are, first; it also infringes up on your right to due process (4th and 5th Amendments).
(5) Excessive fines, in the guise of the Obamacare penalty, violate the Constitutional promise contained in the words “Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.” (8th Amendment) The violation stems not only from the penalty, but also from mandating private citizens to purchase health insurance.
(6) Forcing you to purchase items (Obamacare) also infringes via rights not specifically enumerated in the Constitution and violates the Commerce Clause, the Takings Clause, the Presentment Clause (9th Amendment and 10th Amendment).
(7) The Federal government’s attempts to strong-arm the states also infringes upon the rights of the states in the Enumerated powers clause. The Constitution grants the federal government about thirty-five specific powers, eighteen in Article I, Section 8, and the rest scattered throughout the document. None of those powers authorize control of the health care system outside the District of Columbia and the federal territories. Furthermore, Congress may not commandeer state decision making in the service of federal goals. (10th Amendment).
(8) Why is Obamacare, via its mandate to buy insurance, not utterly illegal in that “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.”? (thirteenth Amendment). It is the federal government forcing people to “work” in finding an insurance policy – to take an “economically productive action for another, without compensation.” Is that not the definition of involuntary servitude? In fact, for the privilege of being forced to engage in “work” you also have to pay for a policy that you may or may not use. SCOTUS ruled in United States vs Reynolds that coercing a citizen to enter in to a contract (which is what a health insurance policy is) violates the “wheel of servitude” as defined by the 13th Amendment.
(9) Section 1 of The 14th Amendment to the Constitution says in part "nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, of property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws." Some proponents of federal health care have argued that every citizen must be treated equally, and the current health care system is an example of gross inequality that runs contrary to principles of the 14th Amendment. And how do you allow thousands of exemptions and special privileges for almost two million Americans who do not have to participate in Obamacare and reconcile that special treatment with equal protection of law for the other 299 million or more? (14th Amendment).
(10) The SCOTUS has defined the Obamacare penalty as a tax. As the National Review points out, “This is a direct tax on the middle class. It is clear that through its proposed $500 billion in tax increases, the $500 billion in Medicare cuts, and the individual mandates and regulations, Obamacare will swiftly harm our country.” As a tax increase, it is a big one. But, even if the Obama administration is now admitting the individual mandate is a tax, that still does not make the law constitutional. Rather than operating as a tax on income, the mandate is a tax on the person and is, therefore, a capitation tax. So the 16th Amendment’s grant of power to Congress to assess an income tax does not apply. The Constitution does allow Congress to assess a capitation tax, but that requires the tax be assessed evenly based on population. That is not how the Obamacare mandate works. It exempts and carves out far too many exceptions to past muster as a capitation tax. The Obamacare mandate may have been deemed a “tax” by Justice Roberts, but it is still unprecedented and unconstitutional even as a tax. (Sixteenth Amendment)
(11) The presidents’s own tinkering with the law, issuing executive orders to change it, modify it to suit his will, are clearly unconstitutional in and of themselves. He is not only violating the equal protection clause (14th Amendment) as he curries favor with his political friends and carves out special exemptions (See #9 above), but he is also re-writing established law in a way that is sweeping and discriminatory, which is not his prerogative. Article 1, Section 1: “All legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and House of Representatives.” We have a president, who should “preside.” We do not have a king, which brings us back, again, to the first words of the Constitution: “We the people.”
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Further thoughts from the article in The American Thinker: Social Security was also highly unconstitutional, but there is little we can do about Social Security now, beyond minor reforms. Most Americans have invested if they've ever held a job, some are vested and collecting their expected returns, still others are collecting well beyond what they ever put in, and all the while politicians continually raid the Social Security piggybank. It's a staple of American life, however unconstitutional its genesis.
But it is because Social Security was passed, because Medicare was later implemented, because the welfare state has been ever-expanding, that progressives today think there is no harm, and that, indeed, it is their moral duty to facilitate the federal government's maintenance of the poor via wealth redistribution. They actually believe that taking money from those who have more and giving it to those who have less is the proper role of our federal government. This has been the role of a great many dictators and socialist legislatures throughout history, but one thing is beyond dispute: our founders never dreamed that this would be the role of the American government. For if the federal government has the right to tax for any purpose, what purpose does any other limitation upon the federal government's power in the Constitution have? Yet generations of progressives have bastardized the Constitution to suit their own ideological agenda, and as such, many Americans have forgotten the very core principles upon which our nation was founded.
