Obamacare And An Ohio Farmer



Roscoe Filburn, a farmer in Montgomery County, Ohio, planted 23 acres of wheat in the fall of 1940 and harvested 462 bushels in July 1941. (Courtesy Mary Lou Filbrun Spurgeon)

I posted on this previously, but I thought there was some interesting information in this story from a couple of weeks ago:

A unanimous Supreme Court ruled against Filburn in the case, which is commonly referred to as "Wickard" for Claude R. Wickard, who was then serving as Secretary of Agriculture.
Justice Robert H. Jackson wrote that even though Filburn's activity was local, and "though it may not be regarded as commerce, it may still, whatever its nature, be reached by Congress if it exerts a substantial economic effect on interstate commerce."
Two conservative appellate court judges relied heavily on Wickard last year when they upheld the constitutionality of the individual mandate.
Judge Jeffrey S. Sutton, of the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals, wrote, "If, as Wickard shows, Congress could regulate the most self-sufficient of individuals -- the American farmer -- when he grew wheat destined for no location other than his family farm, the same is true for those who inevitably will seek health care and who must have a way to pay for it."
"Wickard comes very close to authorizing a mandate similar to ours," wrote Judge Laurence H. Silberman of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, referring to the individual mandate at the core of the health care law that requires individuals to buy health insurance by 2014 or pay a penalty.
"Filburn argued that the act was unconstitutional as applied to him because he was not using the excess wheat for any activity in the interstate market. The Supreme Court unanimously rejected this claim," Silberman wrote.

Without a crazily partisan Supreme Court ruling, I don't see how the individual mandate gets overturned.  I guess it would take some of that judicial activism which Republicans bitch about so much.

I'm just amazed that one of the most significant Supreme Court rulings of the 20th century involved a farmer from Madison Township in Montgomery County.