Health care and the ailing Constitution

Here's the question I didn't get a chance to ask President Obama when he stopped by Montana recently. So far as I know, no one else has asked it of him either:

"If the federal role in health care is not enumerated in the Constitution, and it isn't, then shouldn't it be reserved to the states or the people as guaranteed by the 10th Amendment?"

The 10th Amendment, for those of you who don't already know, says,

"The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."

Pretty powerful stuff, if anyone followed it -- but they don't.

Scour the Constitution as you will, you won't find anything regarding health care. And don't resort to the cheap politician's trick of finding an excuse to do whatever you want in the "general welfare" clause from Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution. The "general welfare of the United States' refers to the survival and health of those very states, not the individual well-being and medical check-ups of each and every individual citizen. The specific powers of Congress are indeed quite limited, and for good reason.

If you don't believe it, then explain why the Founding Fathers went to the trouble of detailing powers of Congress such as the power to "punish piracies' and "establish post offices," but didn't put in anything about "establish rules to ensure adequate health care" for all citizens. Based on the wording of the 10th Amendment, It seems obvious that the omission was because they saw health care as a power 'reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."

And if you don't believe me, then what about James Madison, himself a Founding Father, who wrote in Federalist Paper No. 41, the following:

"For what purpose could the enumeration of particular powers be inserted, if these and all others were meant to be included in the preceding general power? "

Madison, the Father of the Constitution, was trying to allay fears of those who foresaw a "power grab" by Congress under the pretense that the "general welfare" clause gave them unlimited powers. Not so, Madison said. "General welfare" only gives Congress the power to carry out the "enumerated powers' of Section 8, not to invent new ones...

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