The Supreme Court’s Individual Mandate Oral Argument: The Search For A Limiting Principle.

In a new recap for the Health Affairs blog, Wendy Mariner analyzes the positions presented during the Supreme Court’s second day of oral arguments in the case debating the constitutionality of mandate provisions of the Affordable Care Act.

Mariner, a professor of health law, bioethics and human rights, explained that a large part of the day’s proceedings in Secretary of Health and Human Services v. State of Florida could be distilled to a central theme.

“Much of the entire oral argument, therefore, was devoted to the search for a limiting principle, a standard that would distinguish federal power to require individuals to buy health insurance from the sovereign power of the states to compel individuals to take other types of action.”

(A Q&A with Mariner is available here.) 

Earlier in the week, Austin Frakt, an assistant professor of health policy and management, assessed the economic rationale for the health-care law’s individual mandate. In a post for the JAMA Forum, Frakt presented a short summation of the main arguments for the mandate, as well as links to the major briefs opposing it.

“While some have portrayed the mandate as a novel and dangerous encroachment on freedom, it’s important to realize that it has a reasonably long and well-thought-out rationale supporting it,” Frakt wrote.