The ‘death panel’ is a new beast, with god-like powers. Congress should repeal it or test its constitutionality.

By David B. Rivkin Jr. and Elizabeth P. Foley

Signs of ObamaCare’s failings mount daily, including soaring insurance costs, looming provider shortages and inadequate insurance exchanges. Yet the law’s most disturbing feature may be the Independent Payment Advisory Board. The IPAB, sometimes called a “death panel,” threatens both the Medicare program and the Constitution’s separation of powers. At a time when many Americans have been unsettled by abuses at the Internal Revenue Service and Justice Department, the introduction of a powerful and largely unaccountable board into health care merits special scrutiny.

For a vivid illustration of the extent to which life-and-death medical decisions have already been usurped by government bureaucrats, consider the recent refusal by Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius to waive the rules barring access by 10-year old Sarah Murnaghan to the adult lung-transplant list. A judge ultimately intervened and Sarah received a lifesaving transplant June 12. But the grip of the bureaucracy will clamp much harder once the Independent Payment Advisory Board gets going in the next two years.

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By defining the mandate as a tax, one that will not be uniformly applied, the Supreme Court ran afoul of the Constitution.

By David B. Rivkin Jr. and Lee A. Casey

ObamaCare is being implemented, having been upheld as constitutional by the Supreme Court in June in a series of cases now known as National Federation of Independent Business v. HHS. It is becoming increasingly clear, however, that the court took a law that was flawed but potentially workable and transformed it into one that is almost certainly unworkable. More important, the justices also may have created new and fatal constitutional problems.

ObamaCare, or the Affordable Care Act, was conceived as a complex statutory scheme designed to provide Americans with near-universal health-care coverage and to effectively federalize the nation’s health-care system. The law’s core provision was an individual health-insurance purchase mandate, adopted by Congress as a “regulation” of interstate commerce. The provision required most Americans to buy federally determined minimum health-care insurance, or to pay a penalty more or less equivalent to the cost of that coverage.

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Democrats regard federalism as quaint, Republicans at least pay lip service to it

By David B. Rivkin Jr. and Elizabeth Price Foley

In the presidential debates, Barack Obama and Mitt Romney ranged across dozens of topics, but an important one didn’t come up: federalism. And no wonder.

The idea that the Constitution grants only limited and enumerated powers and leaves the remainder to the states is foreign to those who believe that the national government should or even could address voters’ every concern. But contrary to the view widely shared by the political class, Washington—in particular, Congress—does not have the power to pass any law it wants in the name of the “general welfare.”

Politicians should take heed. Voters are increasingly focused on the proper role of government in society: Witness the rise of the tea party and unease over the massive debt caused by entitlements and other government handouts. The continuing loud objection to ObamaCare’s takeover of health care shows that voters want to preserve the Constitution’s architecture of limited federal power.

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The Supreme Court ObamaCare ruling is the topic at a Federalist Society forum on October 4 at Florida International University College of Law. David Rivkin, who led the 26-state case against the US government, and Prof. Elizabeth Foley will present.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

PRLog (Press Release) – Oct 01, 2012 –

The issue of government takeover of healthcare isn’t going away. While Chief Justice John Roberts’ opinion on the legality of ObamaCare put limits on Congress’ power to regulate citizens’ activity, it gutted limitations on Congress’ taxing power.

David Rivkin, who led the 26-state case against the U.S. government in Florida’s 11th District Court (whose judge, Roger Vinson, ruled in the plaintiffs’ favor), said that the Supreme Court decision in June was both “excellent and bad.” The Supreme Court ObamaCare ruling is the discussion topic on Thursday, October 4, at Florida International University College of Law.Prof. Elizabeth Foley, a “founding faculty” of the FIU College of Law, will serve as commentator for the event.

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PBS NewsHour’s Jeffrey Brown talked to Laurence Tribe, a professor at Harvard Law School who had Chief Justice John Roberts and President Obama as students, and David Rivkin, who represented the states that challenged the health care law, about what the Supreme Court’s landmark health care ruling meant and its broader impacts. The following segment highlights David Rivkin’s interview and remarks.

To uphold the individual mandate as an exercise of the taxing power, the majority overlooked the natural meaning of the statutory text.

By David B. Rivkin Jr. and Lee A. Casey

The Supreme Court’s ObamaCare decision is both a triumph and a tragedy for our constitutional system. On the plus side, as we have long argued in these pages and in the courts, the justices held that Congress’s power to regulate interstate commerce cannot support federal requirements imposed on Americans simply because they exist. The court also ruled that there are limits to Congress’s ability to use federal spending to force the states to adopt its preferred policies.

However, in upholding ObamaCare’s mandate that all Americans buy health insurance as a kind of “tax,” the court itself engaged in a quintessentially legislative activity—redrafting the law’s unambiguous text. The court struck down ObamaCare as enacted by Congress and upheld a new ObamaCare of its own making.

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