The president has announced his health-care plan, and congressional Republicans have announced theirs. Although the details are still murky, the plans seem to share one fundamental assumption — that every man, woman and child in the U.S. must participate in the system. The healthy must subsidize the sick; the young must subsidize the old; the not-so-old must subsidize the very young. If this redistribution of wealth is to work without new taxes (and no one wants to admit that new taxes might be necessary), then everyone must be in the plan.
Where, exactly, does the U.S. government get the power to require that every one of its citizens must participate in a government-sponsored health-care plan? Ask this of a health-care reformer and he, or she, will sniff, think a moment, and (if legally trained) will immediately utter the two most magic words in late 20th-century constitutional jurisprudence — Commerce Clause.
If the legality of a health-care package featuring federally mandated universal participation is litigated (and we can bet it will be), and the system is upheld, it will mark the final extension of this originally modest grant of federal authority. Thereafter, Congress will be able to regulate you not because of who you are, what you do for a living, or whether you use the interstate highways, but merely because you exist.
This was not, of course, the original plan. One of the fundamental tenets underlying the Constitution of 1787 was that the federal government was a government of limited powers. Unlike the states, which had more general authority to regulate their citizens, the federal government was to be limited to those powers found within the four corners of the Constitution. In particular, Congress could exercise only that authority specifically granted to it by the people and the states.
There was a list — and not a very long list. One of the powers enumerated on it was the “Power . . . To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations and among the several States.” One of the most serious deficiencies of the first union under the Articles of Confederation was that states were able to erect barriers to trade with other states and foreign countries. The Commerce Clause was added to the Constitution so that Congress could create the original North American free trade zone — within the U.S. itself.
The commerce power in the battered Constitution that emerged from the 1930s and 1940s, however, was very different. After being routed by President Roosevelt and his Congress, the Supreme Court fled to the Commerce Clause, finding there a way to avoid treading upon the vital interests of a Congress determined to regulate the economic relationships of the citizenry, not to mention its health, welfare and safety. In Wickard v. Filburn , in 1942, the court went so far as to rule that Congress could prevent a farmer from growing wheat for his own consumption. Too much of an effect on commerce, reasoned the court — this fellow gobbling wheat he grew himself. After all, he could have purchased it interstate. On that day, the Framers’ ghosts wept.
Of course, the commerce power was still, in theory, limited. In Wickard , after all, the man at least was a farmer, someone engaged in growing and selling foodstocks. Commerce was in the air, somewhere. And the court continued to pay at least lip service to the notion that federal government is a government of limited authority, and that Congress can regulate only based upon some nexus to interstate commerce — or in reference to one of its other enumerated powers, like the power to tax and spend. So long as Congress provides a reasonable explanation of that nexus, its actions will be upheld. The limits of the contemporary Commerce Clause are not very clear, but most would agree there are some limits.
The final test, however, has come. In the new health-care system, individuals will not be forced to belong because of their occupation, employment, or business activities — as in the case of Social Security. They will be dragooned into the system for no other reason than that they are people who are here. If the courts uphold Congress’s authority to impose this system, they must once and for all draw the curtain on the Constitution of 1787 and admit that there is nothing that Congress cannot do under the Commerce Clause. The polite fiction that we live under a government of limited powers must be discarded — Leviathan must be embraced.
The implications of this final extension of the commerce power are frightening. If Congress can regulate you because you are , then it can do anything to you not forbidden by the handful of restraints contained in the Bill of Rights. For example, if Congress thinks Americans are too fat — many are — and this somehow will affect interstate commerce — who’s to say it doesn’t? — can it not decree that Americans shall lose weight? Indeed, under the new system, any activity that might increase the costs of health care might be regulatable.
If individuals can be regulated because of their health, then surely any activity with an impact on health also can be regulated. Perhaps one day it will be decided that every member of the new health-care system — everybody — will be tested for the HIV virus. After all, your HIV status affects your health, the costs of health care, and, thus, interstate commerce. If a mandatory federal health system is justified under a Commerce Clause analysis, then any regulation of any health-related activity also can be justified.
Would the Bill of Rights intervene? Maybe, and maybe not. There is no specific right to eat when and how you like. There is no specific right not to undergo medical testing. The right against unreasonable searches and seizures? Perhaps. What about the “right to privacy”? It’s been overused, but maybe. The Supreme Court might will look into its penumbra crystal and find the necessary limitations — and maybe it won’t.
One thing is clear. Once Congress’s power is extended to every individual not because of his activities, but because he is , limits on its power will depend upon the fortitude and creativity of the courts. No American, whatever his policy views on health-care reform, should rejoice at the disappearance of the last fragments of the principle that the federal government is one of limited powers. It is indeed ironic, and sad, that as the rest of the world is discovering the virtues of limiting their governments, the U.S. seems hellbent on unleashing its own.
This article originally appeared in the September 29, 1993, issue of The Wall Street Journal . © Dow Jones & Co., Inc., 1993. Reprinted by permission.