Greenbeard
Gold Member
I do not deny that insurance is a commodity and could be regulated under interstate commerce, if it WAS being sold interstate. But since it is legally blocked from doing so, that eliminates all legal right of the federal government to do so abdicating it, correctly to the hands of the state to monitor and regulate.
Again, you've got the causality wrong: compartmentalization is a product of state regulation, not the other way around.
That said, the standard for using the Commerce Clause is that the activity in question "exerts a substantial economic effect on interstate commerce." And of course health-related issues do. Insurers operate on a multi-state basis, many insurers will pay (reduced) out-of-state out-of-network rates for clients getting care in a different state, the necessary movement of medical goods and services across state lines has been used to uphold anti-trust laws on providers, the South-Eastern Underwriters precedent has already been set, the current move toward interstate health information exchange and the construction of a Nationwide Health Information Network extends the reach of health plans across state lines, and so on.
You're going to use a medicinal marijuana case in which the DEA destroyed 6 pot plants after the defendants had been caught essentially supplying 'medical marijuana'? In this mess you're going to use a single line out of a Scalia concurrence supporting the right of the DEA and CSA to do what they are supposed to do? Oh come ON!
That "medicinal marijuana case" was a Commerce Clause case, meaning it's relevant to this discussion.
Once we allow interstate selling of insurance, then I believe the government has a case to be involved in regulating said insurance commerce.
The new health insurance exchanges are required to contain multiple multi-state plans (in fact, exchanges themselves may span multiple states). That fact, in and of itself, should be enough (by your own admission) to give the federal government authority to regulate the rules by which the exchanges operate.