Justice Kennedy and Ob​amacare

Justice Anthony Kennedy
Supreme Court of the United States
One First Street N.E.
Washington, DC 20543

Dear Mr. Justice Kennedy,

We live in times that demand that people speak out on consequential issues of the day. There is no issue more important to us all then Obamacare, and your ruling in that case could be critical to the survival of this republic as we know it.

Since the 1930’s Americans have witnessed a massive shift in authority away from local and state governments to federal. That usurpation, together with 70 years of determined social engineering, has enabled Washington to become the arbiter of almost every facet of how we live our lives. The government now has dominion over everything from the food we consume to the medicines dispensed to us to how we manage businesses, schools, hospitals, our means of transportation, to the light bulbs we use and how our toilets flush. Even the staunchest Federalist-Founder could not have envisioned such an outcome. Now, our President wants to control every aspect of how health care is delivered to 310 million of us.

Last year, Mr. Obama and his Democrat congress unilaterally imposed on us a broadly (over 60%) unpopular bill that compels every American to buy health insurance. Millions of healthy young people do not want or need such extensive and costly insurance. Millions of Americans who are well off “self insure” thereby managing the care, treatments and costs of what they purchase. And, the indigent, the usual targets for such massive social programs, are largely removed from this issue because their care is generally provided at little or no cost by local hospitals and clinics who turn away no one.

The most objectionable element of “Obamacare” is the mandate, the requirement, the directive, the coercion. Forcing Americans to buy a product or service whether they want to or not, or suffer severe penalties, is unprecedented in all our history. Montesquieu warned that “government should not force a way upon the people against their will, for to do so is tyranny by legislation”. He further admonished that “if change is desirable the manner in which it is accomplished is, first and foremost, through persuasion, not coercion and government fiat”. It is not enough to say the government is overreaching. Obamacare gives Washington new license to alter our free markets and consumer behavior by imposing its preferences upon us. Will we next all drive GM vehicles, pursue diets demanded by Michelle, read books Washington thinks we should? None of this is anticipated or discussed in the Constitution, least of all the Commerce Clause, which has been extended by interpretation beyond recognition.

It is expected that Obamacare will impose vast new managerial burdens on America’s medical delivery system. Further, any economist not employed by Mr. Obama will tell you that mandates of this type always make markets less efficient thereby driving prices higher. This, despite the fact that ours is the most envied system in the world. Obamacare will hasten the imposition of rationing as it will add 30 million of us to coverage with no concomitant addition of new doctors and nurses. This means longer waits for services and procedures, shorter visits with doctors, strangling paperwork, and the use of “panels” which will set standards and dictates for essential surgeries and treatments thereby making life and death decisions beyond the family or doctor-patient dynamic. Europe’s healthcare quagmire will be visited upon us. I ask you as a consumer, is this what you want for America and your loved ones?

As the probable “swing vote” on this matter you will likely face no more daunting challenge. If you favor the bill you will thrust 13% of America’s economy more deeply into the abyss of government oversight at a time when government is incapable of assuming that encumbrance. To validate the bill is to cast Americans more deeply in thrall to a “big bother” never contemplated by The Founders. To allow Obamacare is to dispense with notions of legislative moderation or the essential roles that individualism and free will have played in our history. To kill this venal act of uber-governance, however, would stamp this court as historic in its insistence that there remains in our construct a balance between the governed and the governors, a line not to be passed by those who, because of their elected position, know “what is best for us all”.

Obamacare is nowhere in our Constitution, it was nowhere in the minds of our founders and, for the sake of this nation, must be overturned.

Respectfully,

Richard Klitzberg