Appeals Court Upholds “Obamacare”

In a case doubtlessly bound for SCOTUS, today the DC Circuit Court Of Appeals ruled that the Affordable Care Act, AKA “Obamacare,” is constitutional. The very long list of losing plaintiffs includes dozens of Republican state Attorneys General. At issue, primarily, was the government’s right to impose a fine for failing to purchase health insurance. The Court writes:

“We acknowledge some discomfort with the Government’s failure to advance any clear doctrinal principles limiting congressional mandates that any American purchase any product or service in interstate commerce,” the opinion reads. “But to tell the truth, those limits are not apparent to us, either because the power to require the entry into commerce is symmetrical with the power to prohibit or condition commercial behavior, or because we have not yet perceived a qualitative limitation. That difficulty is troubling, but not fatal, not least because we are interpreting the scope of a long-established constitutional power, not recognizing a new constitutional right.”