No American Has to Join Obamacare

Chief Justice John Roberts

The Constitution and the Supreme Court protect all Americans from the O’Care beast. Here at National Review you read about the guts of the issue. You find out that the Supreme Court has ruled that Americans who choose not to purchase Obamacare are not lawbreakers, but instead citizens exercising their right to pay a tax instead.

In the opinion upholding Obamacare, the majority opinion, written by Roberts and joined by the four liberal justices, made it clear that Congress does not have the authority under the Commerce Clause to create an obligation to purchase private health insurance. The only way Obamacare was found to be constitutional was by construing the individual mandate as an optional tax: Citizens could either buy government-approved insurance or pay a tax for being uninsured. Both are legitimate and legal choices that must be left entirely to citizens. In other words, those who choose not buy Obamacare insurance are not lawbreakers at all, but citizens exercising their right to pay a tax instead. An important implication of the Roberts ruling is that the individual-mandate tax can never be raised to such a high level that it would effectively make insurance enrollment compulsory.

The most important unknown about Obamacare is how the “uninsured tax” will be perceived by the public. Will it create a sense of obligatory insurance enrollment, especially among young people? Or it will be viewed as an intrusive but optional tax that people can pay to avoid the high premiums of Obamacare?