Virginia v. Sebelius

[Kermit Roosevelt]

Further elaboration of John's point: I assume everyone would agree that Congress could say "We need to fund health insurance; we're going to add $695 to everyone's income tax."  And also that it could then say "But if you buy insurance yourself, we'll give you an offsetting tax credit."  Is that not what this does?

Kermit Roosevelt
Professor of Law
University of Pennsylvania Law School
3400 Chestnut St.
Philadelphia PA 19104
215.746.8775

From: John Bickers [mailto:bickersj1 at nku.edu]
Sent: Tuesday, December 14, 2010 3:47 PM
To: Myron Moskovitz; Kermit Roosevelt
Cc: CONLAWPROFS professors
Subject: RE: Virginia v. Sebelius


"To further this effort, can Congress compel every
American to buy 10 pounds of asparagus each year?  If answer is no, how is
health insurance different?"

"Compel" is the issue.  To make this hypo compare to PPACA, you must rephrase it this way.  "Can Congress tell every citizen they must pay $695 more in their taxes each year if they do not buy 10 pounds of asparagus?"  If the answer is no, how are children, not to mention mortgages and weatherstripping, different?

John Bickers
Salmon P. Chase College of Law
Northern Kentucky University



-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.ucla.edu/pipermail/conlawprof/attachments/20101214/eb01e073/attachment.htm>