Roy Cooper should join lawsuit against health care

TO THE EDITOR:

People across the state are calling on Attorney General Roy Cooper to join 14 other state attorney generals in suing the federal government over the promulgation of the health care individual mandate.

He should do so unequivocally and with due haste. The individual mandate is unconstitutional and abrogates our nation’s federalist system.

The weak foundation for its defense rests upon the Commerce Clause which reads, “(The Congress shall have power) to regulate Commerce ... among the several States …” Yet the individual mandate isn’t regulation of economic activity, but the regulation of the absence of economic activity; a first.

Liberals can cry “slippery slope” to their hearts’ content, but they cannot deny that laws mandating gym membership or the like are logically consistent with mandating the purchase of health insurance.

Nor is this similar to automobile insurance because one can choose not to buy a vehicle and thus avoid purchasing auto insurance. Under the individual mandate, you have to buy insurance merely because you exist.

But worse is that the individual mandate is morally reprehensible. It denies our rationality as human beings and makes our free will subservient to the dictates of a paternalistic government. If someone doesn’t want to buy health insurance, that should be their decision; however, they should face the consequences of their decision.

Mandating health insurance keeps us in perpetual childhood, with important life decisions being taken out of our hands and placed in the government’s. This is antithetical to the very foundation of our nation.



Anthony E. Dent
Chairman
UNC College Republicans