Blog: The Supreme Court Ruling on the Affordable Care Act

Statement

Today is a great day for millions of Americans who have medical coverage that they would not otherwise have, were it not for The Affordable Care Act. As an attorney who works with the Constitution on a daily basis, I was not surprised by the ruling of the Supreme Court today. In fact, whenever asked how I thought the court would rule, I always responded that it was my belief that due to the conservative make-up of the Court, the so-called "individual mandate" would be upheld, but only under the taxation power granted to the federal government by The Constitution.

I had initially held out hope that the Court would correctly rule that The Commerce Clause also granted Congress the authority to enact the individual mandate; however, based on the Court's recent rulings that ignored both logic and precedent (such as Citizens United) I'd realized that simply wasn't very likely to happen.
Every single man, woman, and child will consume health care at some point in their life. This fact is absolutely unique among all areas of commerce. The choice to NOT purchase health insurance, immediately and substantially affects the premiums of others. Every person living in America is engaged in the commerce of health care, whether they are currently receiving treatment or not. This reality is why Congress is authorized by the Constitution to regulate the industry.

The fact is, Congress simply could have enacted a "medicare-for-all" type of system, but they chose not to. There would have been no legitimate Constitutional objection to be made to such a policy (except perhaps by those so far on the fringe of thinking that they believe the current medicare system is unconstitutional, as is Social Security, etc.), yet, the course chosen by our elected leaders did not go nearly so far. The removal of a "public option" from the law was an astounding give-away to the private insurance industry. In fact, it was such a boon for private industry that the republican party, and the republican candidate for Congress in my district, have whole-heartedly endorsed the idea with their plans for Medicare. Under their proposal, instead of having government funded health insurance, seniors in the future would instead be given a voucher to purchase their own medical insurance from a private insurer. Of course, nothing is done in that plan to limit the skyrocketing costs of health insurance, and seniors would soon find themselves without health care, and destitute. Despite the similarity of these government hand-outs to private insurance companies, both the democrats and republicans point their fingers at the other and say they don't care about the sick, or about liberty.

The important thing is, the mandate was upheld. As I've said in the past, this plan is not perfect. It is merely a step in the right direction, and the Court's ruling today, means we can continue to move in that direction. What the people of our district DON'T need is for its so-called leaders to criticize this plan, without offering any alternative. In this election, I am the only candidate with a clear plan for health care in this nation. My democratic opponent says it needs improvement, but like all her "plans", she doesn't provide specifics. Apparently, there is no shape that can be drawn to solve the health care problem in America. My republican opponent says we need to repeal the entire plan, and replace it with something else, but he doesn't offer any specifics on that either. In fact, he even goes so far as to say that some of the provisions are good, and should be kept, but those provisions can't be paid for without the provision he mistakenly believes is unconstitutional.

Bottom line, we need to keep moving our nation forward on issues like this and so many others. We as a nation don't need to move left, and we don't need to move right, we need to move forward. Forward on Jobs and the Economy, forward on Medicare & Social Security, forward on Immigration Reform, forward on Civil Liberties, forward on Getting Money Out of Politics, and so much more. The sad fact is, there's only one candidate in this election offering real concrete solutions to any of these problems facing our district and our nation. If you want more of the same partisan gamesmanship that has ground Washington to a halt, then feel free to support the incumbent republican, or the anointed democrat who comes from a long line of political royalty. However, if you're tired of politics as usual, and ready to support a candidate who is ready to get to work so that you can too, then please support Eric Reyes for Congress.

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