Law Blogger Focuses on Vegetable References in Health-Care Reform Ruling

Cornell Law School Professor Michael Dorf has observed in his blog that each of the three main opinions in the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling on the “Affordable Care Act” “discussed the consumption of vegetables.” In his opinion upholding much of the law as a valid exercise of congressional authority, Chief Justice John Roberts stated “[M]any American do not eat a balanced diet. That group makes up a larger percentage of the total population than those without health insurance. The failure of that group to have a healthy diet increases health care costs, to a greater extent than the failure of the uninsured to purchase insurance. . . . Congress addressed the insurance problem by ordering everyone to buy insurance. Under the Government’s theory, Congress could address the diet problem by ordering everyone to buy vegetables.”

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg apparently responded in her dissenting and concurring opinion that the concept of Congress imposing a “vegetarian state” by prohibiting “the purchase and home production of all meat, fish, and dairy goods, effectively compelling Americans to eat only vegetables,” is a “hypothetical and unreal possibility.” According to Dorf, who is a vegetarian, the U.S. Supreme Court has thus expressly described the failure to eat plant-based foods as unhealthy eating that “imposes greater costs on our health care system than the enormous costs imposed by people going uninsured,” to which he says “Amen brother Roberts.” See Dorf on Law, June 28, 2012.