by Jeremy Leaming
The Obama administration’s signature domestic achievement, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, which requires many people to purchase health care coverage in 2014, is a reasonable and constitutional means to provide millions of uninsured with health care coverage, the Department of Justice argues in a brief lodged today with the Supreme Court.
The brief “arguments track the Obama administration’s arguments before lower courts,” Brian Beutler reports for TPM, which also provides access to the 130-page document.
As Beutler notes, the DOJ explains why the law’s so-called individual mandate is a constitutional means to help millions of Ameri
cans afford health insurance. The law bars insurance companies from denying coverage or charging more to people who have pre-existing medical conditions. For that provision of the law to work, however, the law must require individuals who can afford health insurance to obtain minimum coverage or pay a penalty via their annual income tax returns.
The DOJ’s brief argues that the law is a permissible regulation under its constitutional authority to regulate commerce and its taxing power.
The federal government already regulates the health care market – Medicare and Medicaid are examples. However, millions of people, because of a lack of additional regulation have been unable to afford health care insurance or been denied it because of preexisting conditions.
The DOJ argues that the law’s so-called individual mandate will bridge the gap.
“The uninsured shift tens of billions of dollars of costs for the uncompensated care they receive to other market participants annually,” the brief states. “That cost-shifting drives up insurance premiums, which, in turn, makes insurance unaffordable to even more people.”
f hours of oral argument in the case involving the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit opinion invalidating an integral provision of the health care reform law. In August, the 11th Circuit 
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