Why I think the Supreme Court will uphold Obamacare

The Supreme Court will decide Thursday whether the Affordable Care Act is constitutional. Conventional wisdom is that the Court will declare the ACA (or at least the individual mandate) unconstitutional. Here’s why I think they’re wrong. Since the 1930s, the Supreme Court has ruled that Congress can exercise control over anything that affects interstate commerce. Health care affects interstate commerce more than almost anything else. To invalidate the ACA would be a radical change in the law. Justices Scalia, Alito, and Thomas won’t care, but Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Kennedy will. There’s no principled way to say that Congress can’t regulate health care but can regulate other things that affect interstate commerce. The individual mandate wasn’t President Obama’s opinion (he disagreed with Hillary Clinton about it during the 2007-08 debates.) But it should be upheld because it’s essentially a tax, which Congress has a right to propose.

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