How Many Individual Mandates?

Ever since Congressional Democrats rammed the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) down the collective throats of the American people and it was signed into law by President Obama in early-2010, the most contentious aspect of it has been the individual mandate provision. This is the portion of the law that requires every American to carry some form of health insurance. It is the individual mandate around which most of the constitutional challenges to the law are centered. The argument concerns the limits of the government’s authority to force citizens to purchase any kind of product – specifically, health insurance.

Those that argue in favor of upholding the law make the case that, by requiring all Americans to carry insurance on themselves, it will reduce (but, most assuredly, not eliminate) the burden to taxpayers that result from uninsured individuals using hospital emergency rooms as some form of primary care thus leaving the aforementioned taxpayers stuck with the bill for the medical services of the uninsured. This is probably a valid argument as the vast number of uninsured individuals is, no doubt, a factor in the ever-escalating cost of healthcare. But how far do we want to carry this argument? Consider, for instance, the New Orleans area after Hurricane Katrina in 2005. The Gulf Coast area of Louisiana and Mississippi was devastated by Katrina’s winds, storm surge, and flooding rains. Much of New Orleans found itself underwater as the levees designed to protect the city were unable to withstand Mother Nature’s onslaught. After the storm, we witnessed scenes of utter devastation and unimaginable human misery as residents who were unable, or unwilling, to evacuate were caught in the floodwaters. After the floodwaters receded, we saw tens of thousands of residents queuing up for government-provided emergency housing and other forms of assistance. We saw many of these residents being housed in mobile homes provided by the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Communities of “FEMA trailers”, as they were called, sprang up in the area and many residents were given $2000 Visa debit cards by the federal government, presumably to assist these folks with day-to-day necessities. Two years later, we watched as the situation devolved to near-riots when the residents of the FEMA trailer communities were finally evicted and told that they would have to fend for themselves.

---

Which takes us back to the Commerce Clause of the US Constitution. This is the portion of the Constitution that proponents of the Affordable Care Act point to as justification for the mere existence of the law, specifically the individual mandate. But, if the federal government can force citizens to, by law, carry health insurance, can it not also force them to carry OTHER forms of insurance – specifically, homeowner’s and renter’s insurance. If taxpayer burden is cited as a reason for passing Obamacare in the first place, could the argument not be made that, in the wake of a natural disaster, failure of citizens to carry insurance on their dwellings ALSO represents an extreme burden to the taxpayers? I am not an attorney nor do I have any kind of background in Constitutional law. But it would seem to me that the logic is the same. Failure of people to carry health insurance represents a burden upon those that DO have coverage. And failure of individuals to insure their residences, likewise, places a burden on the folks that act responsibly and sufficiently insure their dwellings and personal property. When will we see passage of the “Affordable Home Reconstruction and Living Assistance Act”?