Consumer Law

District Court for the District of Columbia Rejects Challenge to Health Care Law's Insurance Mandate

By Brian Wolfman

In this 64-page opinion issued yesterday, Judge Gladys Kessler of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia has upheld the insurance mandate of the Affordable Care Act against a constitutional challenge. I believe that makes the district court decision scorecard 3 to 2 (with 3 courts holding that the mandate's passage was within Congress's Commerce Clause power and 2 holding that it wasn't). The Blog of the Legal Times has this write-up on Judge Kessler's decision, including this interesting description of the plaintiffs:

The plaintiffs include a 62-year-old self-employed resident of North Carolina, [lead plaintiff] Margaret Peggy Lee Mead, who has not had health insurance for about 18 years. Mead and two other plaintiffs intend to refuse medical service for the remainder of their lives. Two [other] plaintiffs in the suit said they want to pay for medical services with their own money. Three of the plaintiffs, including Mead, believe ?God will provide for their physical, spiritual and financial well-being,? Kessler wrote.

This description of the plaintiffs suggests that the mandate injures them for standing purposes. Libertarians and/or religious adherents who don't want medical care, and are willing to die if necessary from an infected ingrown toe nail, or who just want to go without insurance and (try to) pay for medical care out of their own pockets, would suffer pocketbook injury if they were subject to the mandate's requirement that they either buy insurance or pay a tax or fine.

Full post as published by CL&P Blog on February 23, 2011 (boomark / email).