Huh?!?! Citizens have no ability or power to place “catastrophic health care costs onto the greater society.” What is their mechanism for doing that?

Government has no duty, legal or moral, to pay for health care costs of its citizens. That is a political decision, not a legal one. If government has such a duty, and a citizen’s failure to voluntarily purchase insurance has such a catastrophic effect, then why do we not fine obese people? Or women who keep having children on medicaid? Or HIV positive people who may infect others? Or drug addicts? Smokers? Or even those who fail to exercise regularly, or eat McDonalds Big Macs? Are these not people who are placing risk for health care costs “onto the greater society?” If you are going to force a person simply by being a citizen to pay for the public’s activties (the costs of their behavior are spread to my premium calculation), should we not be able to outlaw smoking, drinking, or buying fatty foods? And if you can impose a fine, can you not then also choose to impose a prison sentence? Why not just regulate all doctors to accept a set fee for services across the board? That would have a profound and more direct beneficial effect on the U.S. Economy, if economic effect were in fact a valid test of constitutionality, no? And ironically, unlike citizens under the Law, the doctors are better situated than the individual mandate because could choose to quit being doctors if they did not like such law.

There were Consitutional methods available to enact the Law. If Congress wanted to imose a tax to pay for national Health insurance, which provision originated in the House, that would most likely have been Constitutional. But the Health Care Act was passed amidst specific reepeated DENIALS that its enactment was being done under the taxing authority. Having made that choice, its proponents should not now be permitted to ignore its unconstitutionality.