mandate

from Slate.com:

As virtually all constitutional scholars agree, the odds that this suit will succeed are at best marginal. The federal government has vast power to tax and to regulate interstate commerce on a rational basis. The statute's rationale—that a person's failure to purchase insurance has a negative impact on health care delivery and the structure of the insurance industry, so can be taxed—is squarely within that constitutional standard.

I just don't see it. If this is true, then the government could order everybody to buy an anaphylactic pen because not having one would have a negative impact on health care delivery and the structure of the insurance industry.

One of the reasons I haven't had health insurance for most of my adult life is that I refuse to pay a company to cheat and insult me. It makes my stomach knot to contemplate it. Just the thought of it has a negative impact on me and the structure of my life. I honestly don't know what I'm going to do if it's the law of the land in four years. This is not one of the things I ever pictured myself going to jail for.

The Slate article is by Eliot Spitzer, by the way.