The Carol Anne clause.

I'm gonna fly blind for a bit - like Northwest airlines pilots - with a few questions. They could have reasonable answers - established in precedent - and I'm simply unaware...so correct me if I've missed the big, obvious answers.

1. The federal government is about to mandate the purchase of a service - called health insurance. Is there any precedent for this? Has the Federal government every mandated the purchase of a service or product? If so, what?

Please note that car insurance is a requirement in many states. It is not a mandate. It's a requirement if you own and drive a car. It is not mandated that everyone have car insurance. If you want to drive a car, the car must be insured. Non drivers are not mandated to buy car insurance. The comparison does not work with health insurance. For the analogy to hold - one could opt out of having health insurance if one did not have a physical body. Ghosts will not be required to buy into a HMO. Presumably, when Carol Anne from Poltergeist was trapped in the TV netherworld she would have been exempt from the health insurance mandate...but the moment Zelda Rubenstein got her back...that's another story....

Secondly, even if the analogy worked, states require car insurance. Not the feds.

so

2. Is forcing people to buy a service/product constitutional? The market argument is clear. If more healthy people are insured, the cost goes down for all. That's how insurance works. Further if an insured person becomes ill they are less likely to become a financial burden on the government - which is to say...us.

Still I'm going to go out on a limb with my nominal knowledge and say that forcing healthy people to buy a product they do not want, and see no need to have, raises issues with both the 9th and 10th amendments. Has something similar to this been litigated? I truly want to know.

A health insurance mandate will be signed into law in the next few months. Shortly afterward a healthy twenty something, with none of the mitigating exceptions written into the bill, will refuse to purchase insurance. She/He will also refuse to pay the fine, claiming the mandate and the punishment are unconstitutional. The ACLU or Judicial Watch or some similar organization will take the case. Depending on the lower court judges this case has all the earmarks of one that will travel quickly up the judicial ladder. Or one or more judges on the Roberts Supreme Court will bring the case to the top. Thomas or Scalia come to mind.

Is this is the elephant in the room? Maybe. Unless, of course, I am just ignorant of the settled law that pertains.