The ranking Republican on the Senate Finance Committee believes the individual mandate included in Democrats' healthcare bill is an unconstitutional overreach of government.
Individuals are required to purchase health insurance under the Democrats' healthcare bill, or they will face a tax penalty of 2.5 percent of income. Employers are required to buy insurance for their employees or pay a penalty of 8 percent of payroll. However, some critics of the legislation argue that auditing self-insured employers and mandating that people buy insurance is beyond the authority of the federal government, and therefore it is unconstitutional. Senator Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) agrees, but notes there is no legal precedent that would indicate how the Supreme Court may rule on the matter. "Starting with a philosophy that the federal government is a government of limited power - they can't do anything that's not in the Constitution, and the states can do anything that's not prohibited in the Constitution - then I can say that under the Tenth Amendment, the federal government doesn't have the authority to make you buy anything or keep you from buying anything," regards Grassley. "And particularly that's true of guns now because we recently had a Supreme Court [ruling] in that particular case of guns." Grassley says states could require people to purchase health insurance, as they do car insurance, because states have broader legislative authority than the federal government does.
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