Virginia is sitting on a serious battle over the future of health care in the state that has precedent-setting implications across the country. Essentially, the state says that no one can be mandated to buy health insurance, and the Federal health care legislation says otherwise. On to the courts.

Here’s a little more information on how it’s all going down:

A while back Virginia passed some state legislation that nobody could be forced to buy health care. Then the Federal government passed their “landmark” health care reform legislation- so Virginia decided the only thing to do was to sue the Federal government claiming the new legislation was and is unconstitutional. Awesome.

The judge currently hearing the case will only decide whether the case can proceed through the While the judge will only decide if the suit can proceed, not whether the Federal legislation is constitutional, so this case has a long way to go before there are any decisions made.

Here’s my take: Is it constitutional? Probably not. The constitution and pretty much everything after it is slanted toward states’ rights, and forcing people to buy something isn’t exactly the way that things work in our government system, in theory. In practice, though, it’s pretty well established. Social security for one, car insurance for another. Businesses are routinely required to buy protections and insurance, banks are more or less required to carry FDIC insurance, and so on and so forth.

My point is, there is a lot of precedent for the Federal government requiring people to buy things. Is it all constitutional? Maybe not, but if Virginia wins this case, we’ll need to change a whole lot of things beside.

It would be difficult for this to proceed the way things did with the stimulus money- allowing states to accept or reject the health insurance legislation would severely undermine the way the system is set up to work.

U.S. Department of Justice attorney Ian Gershengorn argues that the lawsuit should be dismissed because Virginia lacks the standing to even challenge the health care law. Ouch. This is going to get very legally ugly before anyone gets any kind of resolution. Gershengorn says that an individual who has to pay a fine for not buying health insurance would have to sue on their own, not the state for them before it even happens.

But this isn’t the only lawsuit around this legislation- there are plenty of them happening around the country. Analysts say that there is a good likelihood that one of these will make it to the Supreme Court but a small likelihood that the state suing (or group of states) will win.

In the end, the constitution says that the Federal government’s power is above that of the state’s.

So, there is little chance that Virginia’s or any other state’s objection will have a major effect- but you never know. If Virginia and other states are suing the Federal government over the new legislation, they will look for other ways to make the legislation go away- this is not going to be an easy or short fight.

Photo Credit: Waldo Jaquith