Constitutionality of health overhaul questioned

On top of all the other obstacles facing President Obama in his quest to pass health reform is this one: Does the U.S. Constitution allow the government to require uninsured Americans to buy medical insurance or impose a tax penalty if they refuse?

Congress has never before required citizens to purchase any good or service, but that is what both House and Senate health bills would mandate.

DUH – d’ya think really? What’s the first clue.

The question of the mandate’s constitutionality “hasn’t been part of the public debate, but the legal community has been debating it. It’s been on all the legal blogs,” said Michael Cannon, director of health-policy studies at the libertarian Cato Institute. He said “the Constitution does not grant Congress the power to force Americans to purchase health insurance.”

In 1994, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office noted that a “mandate requiring all individuals to purchase health insurance would be an unprecedented form of federal action.”

“The government has never required people to buy any good or service as a condition of lawful residence in the United States,” the CBO said.

THINK about this: American citizens compelled at gunpoint (remember the B.O. Presidium Czar reminding us a la Lenin and Mao that “political power grows out of the barrel of a gun”) to purchase something in order to reside in the country without being penalized?

Hello? What is spelled by the letters: T-O-T-A-L-I-T-A-R-I-A-N?