You've done a 180, baby. (UPDATED)

Erwin Chemerinsky is excited as hell that the healthcare reform bill may contain a mandatory tax. Article here.

Keep your politics off my body.

It’s worth remembering that war cry as it represented the marrying-up of the libertine aspects of the New Left with the statist mentality of the liberal movement of days gone by.

Days long gone by now as proponents of the vapor bill existence of current healthcare reform can barely contain their glee that there will be an effective tax on the oxygen you breath if you do not sign up for a healthcare plan.

Although the desirability of this approach can be debated, it unquestionably would be constitutional.

Those who claim otherwise make two arguments. First, they say the requirement is beyond the scope of Congress' powers. And second, they say that people have a right to be uninsured and that requiring them to buy health insurance violates individual liberty. Neither argument has the slightest merit from a constitutional perspective.

Congress has broad power to tax and spend for the general welfare. In the last 70 years, no federal taxing or spending program has been declared to exceed the scope of Congress' power. The ability in particular of Congress to tax people to spend money for health coverage has been long established with programs such as Medicare and Medicaid.

Congress has every right to create either a broad new tax to pay for a national healthcare program or to impose a tax only on those who have no health insurance.

(italics, ours)

Unquestionably! Neither argument has the slightest merit! Congress has every right! Can you feel the excitement?

Unlike some people, we’ve never advertised ourselves as legal or constitutional scholars but we certainly hope that the Supremes take a look at this because this is unquestionably an unprecedented and specific or targeted fine for individuals choosing not to sign up for healthcare.

Chemerinsky trots out the auto insurance mandate for drivers. This argument is misleading because mandatory auto insurance is a condition for participating in an activity (car driving) that is not Congressionally-mandated.

At the end of the day, though, this boils down to hypocrisy pure and simple as healthcare proponents are now only too welcome to impose government and politics upon our beings, the likes of which they have always been famously opposed.

(UPDATE #1):We decided to liberate the comment below from B-Daddy to the main page because it speaks to an incredibly important point with respect to healthcare that we have not adequately addressed in these pages.

What happened to the privacy argument in Roe v Wade? The Supremes said that the decision on abortion was a private one between doctor and patient. So how is the decision on what type of medical procedure to use to treat prostate cancer any different? Yet Obama is touting government intervention and limiting which procedures are used to keep the price down? If that is allowed, why can't abortions be banned because they cost money?
Hypocrisy indeed.

The entire premise of Roe v. Wade rested on the idea of personal rights and then by extension the fundamental matter of privacy between the individual and the individual’s doctor in making medical decisions.

This is the part of the healthcare reform debate that cannot be squared by its statist proponents. With respect to Roe v. Wade and many other things, they have rested their hat on the principles of personal choice and privacy and now, for the sake of convenience, want to jettison it for the sake of the President’s legislative crown jewel.