DOOLEY Observed: Can Congress Mandate Health Insurance?

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When you elect clowns, expect a circus ..............

Sunday, January 23, 2011

Can Congress Mandate Health Insurance?

by NPR Staff
January 22, 2011
Alex Brandon/AP

One of the key objections for most Republican lawmakers against the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, signed into law last year by President Obama, is what's called the individual mandate — a provision that will require most Americans to become insured by 2014.

Many Republicans, including Rep. Dan Lungren of California, believe Congress doesn't have the constitutional authority to make people buy insurance, and they object to the idea that everyone must have it.

But as constitutional law expert Andrew Koppelman tells Weekends on All Things Considered host Guy Raz, Congress can trace its constitutional authority to mandate health care coverage to the Constitution's "necessary and proper clause."