The U.S. Congress passed and the U.S. Supreme Court so far has upheld the Affordable Care Act, but West Virginia and the other 49 states don’t have to mindlessly abide by it without challenge.
As the Tenth Amendment affirms, “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”
Nowhere does the Constitution authorize the federal government to provide or control health insurance. Nowhere does it empower the federal government to compel American citizens to purchase it. Congress did not have the authority to enact Obamacare, and the Supreme Court erred in upholding it.
Little by little, understanding of the travesty that is Obamacare is spreading, resistance to it growing. State attorneys general have challenged this unlawful law on various grounds, so far unsuccessfully.
Recently, West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey and 10 other state AGs wrote to Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, outlining their objections to the manner in which the Affordable Care Act is being implemented, citing specifically the president’s habit of “unilaterally rewriting the flawed health care law.”
One of the latest examples of this ongoing, potential abuse, characterized by the AGs as “flatly illegal under federal constitutional and statutory law,” occurred last November when Obama announced that insurance companies could continue offering non-compliant plans beyond the legislated deadline.
“The Administration may not decide single-handedly which parts of the law it will enforce and which parts it will ignore,” Morrisey and his peers objected. “The only way to fix this problem-ridden law is through congressional action.”
If it’s true that the Obama Administration acted lawlessly, congressional action is not the only solution -- and letters of protest to a bureaucratic federal agency in an unresponsive administration won’t accomplish much.
What’s also needed are state officials and state citizens with the courage to demand their constitutionally-protected prerogatives.
