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D.C. Circuit Court Rules Health Reform?ÇÖs Individual Mandate Constitutional

November 16, 2011
In a 2-1 split decision, the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia ruled that the individual mandate under the health reform law is constitutional. In directly addressing whether the individual mandate would violate the commerce clause of the U.S. Constitution, the court noted that, ?Ç£Congress, which would, in our minds, clearly have the power to impose insurance purchase conditions on persons who appeared at a hospital for medical services - as rather useless as that would be - is merely imposing the mandate in reasonable anticipation of virtually inevitable future transactions in interstate commerce.?Ç¥ The court rejected the notion that only voluntary, affirmative acts, can cause an individual to enter into or affect, interstate commerce. A copy of the opinion is available here.
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