This Letter to the Editor by Paul Bade was published in the October 20, 2009 issue of the Mankato Free Press. Has your letter been published recently? Submit it!
Congress is ignoring two crucial factors in its debate over health insurance. One is the reality that the problem is not health insurance, but high medical prices due in part to market distortion caused by federal entitlement programs and income tax policies related to health insurance.
The more crucial issue is that the proposed federal health insurance mandates are unconstitutional in principle and in detail.
You have a constitutional right to be secure in your person, property and papers. That means that no government has any authority to search or demand your health insurance or medical records unless there is probable cause that they are related to a criminal matter.
You have a right to a federal government limited to the powers specifically enumerated in the Constitution. The power to mandate individual or employer-based health insurance is not among those powers, nor can such power be properly derived from the power “to collect taxes…to promote the general welfare of the United States” or even the power to regulate interstate commerce.
Congress is proposing variously disguised taxes on those who do not have health insurance. These are direct taxes, which are prohibited by the Constitution unless apportioned by state, yet they cannot be apportioned since uninsured persons are not apportioned. Therefore these schemes are illegal.
Congress also wants to criminalize lack of health insurance as intent to defraud health care providers; this is as absurd as declaring gun ownership proof of intent to murder.
It is up to each of us to sternly remind our senators and representatives that they are acting outside their legal authority, and demand that they cease and desist.
