Here towards the end of the town halls, an argument has gotten popular that goes something like this: health care is not in the constitution, therefore, the government cannot create a federal health care program. There’s a major flaw in this argument.
From the preamble:
We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
But it also shows up later in Article 1 Section 8
The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises, to pay the debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States; but all duties, imposts and excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;
Girl vs Robot: General Welfare
This is followed by a list of basic powers listed explicitly in the constitution. Promotion of the general welfare has been the constitutional basis for federal education funding, social security, medicare and other such programs. The line of attack on health care takes a rather narrow reading of the Tenth Amendment:
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.
If you find the narrow reading compelling, you can see why they would argue that anything the government does other than immigration, taxes, the military, and the post office is unconstitutional. However, to buy into this we would need to ignore 200 years of legal precedence.
It is a well-establish fact in this nation that the general welfare extends beyond the power explicitly enumerated in the constitution. We even have a specific example of a government program that provides health insurance and has been in place for decades.
So there’s the problem, the law of the land agrees that such programs are constitutional. If someone wants to change that, they’ll need to change the minds of most congressmen, constitutional scholars and lawyers, and the supreme court. I suppose it’s possible. If we start electing only people this this point of view, all of the federal programs could be abolished in as little as twenty years or so.
But that’s the important part. An attempt to label health care reform unconstitutional is somewhat disingenuous. The actual constitutional question was answered 200 years ago and has be reaffirmed every few years since then. Such an argument is not "holding fast to the true constitution" it is radically changing the law of the land of the United States of America.