It's unconstitutional, but....

Klein now admits the current health care bill is fuzzy around the Constitutional edges. (like that penumbral talk which resolved the abortion issues in our country.) But he discounts the idea that the Supreme Court will be courageous enough to send Congress back to the drawing board for something a little more ... Constitutional.

The constitutionality of the individual mandate

It's a credit to George Will that even in an op-ed arguing that the Supreme Court should declare the individual mandate unconstitutional, Will concludes that they almost certainly won't. As he says, the point of the challenge is to "defy a pernicious idea and clarify conservatism," which is different than overturning the law.

But it's also worth saying that, long-term, conservatism could suffer no greater disaster than the death of the individual mandate. This country will have a national health-care system, and sooner than later (sic). The cost pressures make that inevitable. If you want that national system to be private, as most conservatives do, then your only hope is the individual mandate. That's been true in countries such as the Netherlands and Switzerland, and in Singapore, which is often upheld as a conservative model, contributions to health savings accounts are compulsory.

Eliminate those options from the U.S. menu, and you're ensuring that Medicare, Medicaid or some sort of public option will eventually take over the market, as there's no constitutional issue with taxation in return for public services.

Left unsaid: "... but there is with forcing people to purchase a government-regulated service on penalty of a fine, as there is no Commerce Clause president for inactivity -- or forcing people to buy a product to subsidize the cost of needy others consuming the product -- the only way the insurance plan can work without factoring in the assumption of risk to the business model, which has always priced the service according to the risks and need for use.

This isn't a tax regulation scheme -- it's a power grab mightily extending the Commerce Clause reach.

What's next -- we all pay the same auto rates, with no adjustment for past history or risk factors, because uninsured/unlicensed drivers on our roadways are skipping out on paying their bills?

But without tackling the undocumented citizens problem, and assuming even without being covered under the national insurance plan, they will still present at the ER for emergency treatments, and still be unable to pay those bills -- we still aren't addressing the cost of who pays for uncovered care. Except to force the healthy into the pool, and take away their right to choose because that's the only way the economists can keep the out-of-control cost system afloat.