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New Obamacare Challenge: The Origination Clause
The Pacific Legal Foundation has filed a motion in its pending suit against Obamacare asking the judge (1) to rule that, when it enacted the Senate health care reform bill that includes a “tax” for not purchasing health insurance, Congress violated the Origination Clause, which says that all revenue bills must originate in the House; and (2) that their clients are under no legal obligation to purchase health insurance under the ruling of the Court.
The first of these issues was never litigated before the Supreme Court and remains open; the second concerns the meaning and effect of the Supreme Court’s ruling that the “requirement” to purchase insurance was unconstitutional under the Commerce and Necessary and Proper clauses (and that only the “penalty,” not the requirement, was upheld as an exercise of the tax power).