Some Justices Question Health Law’s Constitutionality

U.S. Supreme Court justices hinted they might strike down President Barack Obama’s health-care law as the court’s Republican appointees suggested Congress went too far by requiring Americans obtain insurance or pay a penalty.

On the second of three days of arguments in the historic case, justices’ questions indicated they might split 5-to-4, with the court’s five Republican appointees joining together to overturn the law.

Justice Anthony Kennedy said the measure is unlike others the court upheld previously because it tells individuals they “must act.” Kennedy, who most often occupies the court’s ideological middle ground, said, “That changes the relationship of the government to the individual in the very fundamental way.”

The law would extend coverage to 32 million people and revamp an industry that accounts for 18 percent of the U.S. economy. The court hasn’t overturned a measure with such sweeping impact since the 1930s, when it voided parts of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal, the package of economic programs enacted in the 1930s in response to the Great Depression. Read more......