Wow. Is that a fact?
The first big GOP debate of the primary season brought viewers a flurry of claims and counterclaims, not all built on solid ground.
A look at some of those claims and how they compare with the facts:
BACHMANN: Spoke of “the unconstitutional individual mandate” several times, a reference to a requirement for people to carry health insurance, a central element of the 2010 federal health care law.
THE FACTS: Nothing is unconstitutional until courts declare it to be so. The constitutionality of the individual mandate has been challenged in lawsuits in a number of states, and federal judges have found in favor and against. The Supreme Court will probably have the final word. But for now, the individual mandate is ahead in the count. And the first ruling by a federal appeals court on the issue, by the 6th U.S. Court of Appeals in June, upheld the individual mandate.
To be sure, there are some gray areas in the Constitution, but for the most part the document isn’t difficult to interpret. With regard to ObamaCare and its “individual mandate”, there is nothing in Article 1, Section 8 granting Congress the power to force private citizens to purchase health insurance (or any other good or service for that matter). People are free to disagree with that I suppose, but I’m not sure what the substantive basis is for them to do so. In any case, for the AP to say nothing is unconstitutional until the courts say so – especially in the context of a fact-check – is disingenuous.
Maybe they should just call themselves “opinion-checkers.”
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