If the government can make you buy something, why can't it make you buy anything? You may one day need health care so if they can make you buy health insurance now, why can't they make you buy broccoli, since you will need food? If all people do not buy cars, cars may become more expensive for those who do, so should the government make everyone buy a car?
“Could you define the market — everybody has to buy food sooner or later, so you define the market as food, therefore, everybody is in the market; therefore, you can make people buy broccoli,” Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia said during arguments for health care reform called the Affordable Care Act, colloquially called ObamaCare.
Votes are likely to go along pre-determined political lines but perhaps not; there should be no chance a justice like Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who once contended being a Latina woman gave her special judicial powers, is voting against anything that looks like a progressive advance. But even she appeared skeptical of Solicitor General Donald Verrilli's claims that the individual mandate is not based upon the idea that the government can force people into commerce and that there is no limit on its power to do so.
You Can Make People Buy Broccoli’: Scalia Goes After Health Care Law - CBS News
