The Free Press, Mankato, MN

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October 28, 2009

Your View: Nothing unconstitutional about health-care bills

Fred Slocum, Mankato

Paul Bade’s Oct. 21 Your View letter advances some ridiculous claims. First, Bade claims the “problem is not health insurance, but high medical prices,” as if the real problems of 46 million uninsured and insurance-company outrages magically vanish.

In reality, lack of insurance contributes to high medical prices. Uninsureds’ visits to clinics, hospitals and emergency rooms create costs that must be recouped — by raising prices paid by other patients and their insurers. Second, Bade implies reforms are unconstitutional. Health care is absolutely within the realm of interstate commerce: Insurers routinely allow or deny coverage across state lines, and some patients cross state lines for health care. The Constitution’s Commerce Clause is ample warrant for congressional healthcare reform.

Bade apparently believes everything the federal government does outside the Constitution’s enumerated powers is automatically unconstitutional. That’s a right-wing fantasy. Enacting it would require wholesale repeal of worker safety laws, environmental protection laws, the ban on child labor, and the 1964 Civil Rights Act banning racial segregation in public places and racial discrimination in employment — all policy areas not mentioned in the Constitution’s enumerated powers (Article I, Section 8). Reform also will ban currently-unregulated outrages like insurers refusing coverage based on preexisting conditions and dropping coverage for people who become ill. I suppose Bade would claim banning these practices, too, is unconstitutional.

Bade claims the Constitution prohibits taxes not apportioned by state (Article I, Section 9). The 16th Amendment (1913) specifically overrules this, empowering Congress to levy taxes “without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration.” Bade succeeds in one respect: Adding to the sea of right-wing lies about health care reform.

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