Law Commons^™

Constitutional Uncertainty And The Design Of Social Insurance: Reflections On The Aca Case, Michael J. Graetz, Jerry L. Mashaw

Faculty Scholarship

The Health Care Case is best understood as a legal attack on the means but not the goals of the health care legislation. This emphasis on means rather than ends and on state over federal powers potentially poses significant risks for the complex institutional arrangements for social insurance that now exist and may imply harmful constraints on how Congress can restructure these programs to better meet the needs of the American people in the twenty-first-century economy. Not coincidentally, the new constitutional framework announced in the ACA decision favors those who want to dismantle rather than strengthen the nation’s social insurance …