Constitutionality of the Individual Mandate Essay

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Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA)

One of the most significant recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions was the Court's validation of the PPACA's individual mandate, requiring virtually all Americans (with some exceptions) to purchase health insurance. The individual mandate was a critical component of the ability of the Act to function as it was designed by legislators. It was essential that people who were relatively healthy and young were insured to expand the risk pool of the insured given that preexisting conditions were no longer allowed to be grounds for denying people health insurance. This ensured that people would not simply wait until they were sick to seek out insurance. However, it is worth noting that there were numerous exceptions to this provision, including "undocumented immigrants, religious objectors, and people who are incarcerated" and those for whom paying the penalty for being non-insured would cause a financial hardship (Musumeci 2012: 2). The Act also expanded Medicaid, the state-run, federally-subsidized healthcare program for those living in poverty. The "ACA expands the Medicaid program's mandatory coverage groups by requiring that participating states cover nearly all people under age 65 with household incomes at or below 133% FPL ($14,856 per year for an individual and $30,657 per year for a family of four in 2012)" (Musumeci 2012: 3). While the individual mandate and the Medicaid expansion were the two critical provisions on which the Act was challenged when it was brought forth to the Supreme Court, the majority of the court (including Chief Justice Roberts) "held that the individual mandate is a constitutional exercise of Congress' power to levy taxes, given that the Constitution states that "Congress shall have Power.

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. . To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to say the Debts and provide for the common Defense and general Welfare of the United States" (Musumeci 2012: 4). It was noted that this was something of a surprise, given that the federal government, in its support of the ACA, did not claim that the penalty levied for being uninsured was a tax. However, the Court decided that the individual mandate effectively functioned as such, given that the amount of the fine was less than the price of insurance and could not be more, based upon the Act's provisions (Musumeci 2012: 4). The dissenting minority viewed the individual mandate instead as a shared responsibility payment, which it stated was indeed unconstitutional. However, the penalty was imposed solely by the IRS and collected like a tax even though its purpose was not to raise revenue and was labeled a "penalty" by the federal government (Cole 2012).

It should be noted that before the decision was handed down, an….....

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