Ref: http://www.scotusblog.com/2011/11/big-boost-for-health-care/
“Wickard,” the opinion said, “comes very close to authorizing a mandate similar to” the one in the health care law. The effect of the federal law at issue in that case, the opinion said, was to force any farmer into the wheat market — in the same way that the new insurance mandate forces some private individuals into the health coverage market even if they don’t want to be there. Congress, the panel commented, “is merely imposing the [insurance] mandate in reasonable anticipation of virtually inevitable future transactions in interstate commerce.”
Even not considering the absurdity of Wickard itself, I still see some logical gaps here. For Wickard to be a precedent to follow, not to expand upon, it would have had to force all the farmers who didn’t plant wheat to plant wheat and participate in the wheat market, which it didn’t.
“It is enough, for this case,” the panel said, “to recognize…that the health insurance market is a rather unique one, both because virtually everyone will enter or affect it, and because the uninsured inflict a disproportionate harm on the rest of the market as a result of their later consumption of health care services.”
The assertion that participation in the health insurance market is inevitable for everyone is obviously confused between the participation in the health-care market and the participation in the health insurance market. The former is inevitable, while the latter isn’t. Many Americans have chosen not to purchase any medical insurance for one reason or another, and for extended periods in their lives. So clearly that is not inevitable. The only reason that these people could “inflict a disproportionate harm on the rest of the market” (note that the “market” here is actually the health-care market) is the not-so-odd notion that we as human beings cannot sit there and watch another fellow human being die, combined with the odd notion that in order not to sit there and watch another fellow human being die we somehow have the right to force others, regardless of their individual situations or free will, to pay for the rescue effort. So the majority’s reasoning here, to me, sounds almost like running in circles – because it’s virtually inevitable for everyone, we are making it so for everyone.