Government-run health care unconstitutional? Let's see what the founding documents have to say!

[thereismore]

The preamble to the Constitution:

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

From the Declaration:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.


To me that means that the government is there to organize its powers in such a way that will make people safe and happy. If the people think that healthcare is necessary toward these ends, and I certainly do, then the government should provide it or the people have every right to institute a new government that will.

[Bill McBlueState]

1. Why would you cite the Declaration of Independence

to establish constitutionality? :shrug:

[thereismore]

4. Because it has a legal status in the US law. It's not just literature. nt

[Romulox]

5. You're wrong. Maybe try law school before setting out on the lecture circuit? nt

[thereismore]

6. OK, maybe we are both right. Read this:

The constitutional and legal status of the Declaration of Independence is curiously ambiguous. John Hancock (in his capacity as president of the Second Continental Congress) and James Madison both considered it to be, in Madison's words, “the fundamental Act of Union of these States.” Reflecting that view, Congress has placed it at the head of the United States Code, under the caption, “The Organic Laws of the United States of America.” The Supreme Court has infrequently accorded it binding legal force, for example, in resolving questions of alienage (Inglis v. Trustees of Sailor's Snug Harbour, 1830). Yet lawyers generally, and the Supreme Court in particular, have been reluctant to treat the Declaration as part of American organic law, or even to accord it the restricted status of the Preamble to the Constitution. Conservatives like Daniel Webster denied that there is a constitutionally recognized right of revolution, and those state supreme courts that have addressed the issue in the twentieth century have adopted Webster's view. Reformers, such as antebellum abolitionists, insisted that the Declaration was part of the constitutional order, while their opponents, including John C. Calhoun, denigrated its authority and validity. The adoption of the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments allayed the urgency of that question by incorporating concepts of equality, freedom, and citizenship into the operative constitutional text.

Nevertheless, the Declaration of Independence endures as the basic statement of the principles of American government. Abraham Lincoln invoked its authority in the supreme crisis of the union, and it remains today the foundation of our constitutional order.

http://www.answers.com/topic/united-states-declaration-of-independence

[Romulox]

8. No, we are NOT both right. You are wrong. And "answers.com" isn't an authorative source.

A trained legal mind knows two things:

a) the source of the authority that she relies on...
b) to quit when she is BEHIND.

:hi:

[thereismore]

9. ...

:hi:

[Lil Missy]

2. It doesn't matter what the Constitution says. It matters what the Supreme Court says it says.

[Romulox]

3. The Declaration of Independence is not a controlling document. Unrec. nt

[thereismore]

7. See post #6. nt

[cliffordu]

10. Well...

:popcorn:

[Oregone]

11. Mandated individual purchases on the private market is the concern here

It isn't the entire idea of a government-run system that has a constitutionality problem. The reform wont create one. The problem is forcing Americans to engage in commercial activity with the private sector.

[thereismore]

12. A single payer is much less problematic. The money should come from taxation. nt