DETROIT — A federal judge on Thursday upheld the authority of the federal government to require everyone to have health insurance, dealing a setback to groups seeking to block a national health care plan.
The ruling came in a lawsuit filed in Michigan by a Christian legal group and four people who claimed lawmakers exceeded their power under the Constitution’s commerce clause, which authorizes Congress to regulate trade.
Judge George Caram Steeh in Detroit said the mandate to get insurance by 2014 and the financial penalty for skipping coverage are legal. He said Congress was trying to lower cost of insurance by requiring participation.
“Without the minimum coverage provision, there would be an incentive for some individuals to wait to purchase health insurance until they needed care,” the judge said.
The Justice Department hailed Steeh’s opinion as the first time a “court has considered the merits of any challenge to this law.”
Robert Muise of the Thomas More Law Center in Ann Arbor, Mich., which filed the case, said he would take it to a federal appeals court in Cincinnati. The Associated Press
