There is more than there are the lawsuits. More than a dozen states are going to court to challenge this health care bill claiming it’s unconstitutional. Our justice correspondent Pete Williams has more on that part of the push back.
“We simply can't have Washington make the rules and we get stuck with the bill.”
Fourteen states and county,
“It's unprecedented expansion.”
“They have the individual mandate, held unconstitutional.”
“…does trample the constitution.”
Attorney's General from every part of a nation nearly all of them Republican are challenging the health care law in court.
“Congress exceeded its powers in terms of its requiring the individual mandate that anybody have to buy a health care policy or suffer a penalty some sort of …”
The new law does something the government has never tried before, requiring nearly everyone to buy something sold by private companies, in this case health insurance. The constitution gives Congress broad powers to regulate commerce the business of selling .But opponents of the law say while that allows Congress for example to regulate how cars are made and sold, it doesn't mean the government could require everyone to buy one. “Congress can no more make you buy insurance than it can make you buy a GM car in order to help out the government who have now subsidize GM.”
But supporters of the law say Congress have broad power to regulate things that end up having an effect on the economy. They pointed out that it ends up when people without insurance go to the emergency room for their health care.
-It's a part of the whole scheme of things that, to say that, uh, you know, you can't just slack off it soon that somebody's gonna take care of you if you have some sort of an emergency.
Tonight the justice department says it will vigorously defend the law, and some legal experts dismiss the lawsuits as a legal long shot, but they do raise a question the courts have never directly answered.
Pete Williams, NBC news at the Supreme Court.
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