Recognizing the vulnerability of relying on the Commerce Clause alone, the Obama administration in the Florida case shifted its emphasis to the Necessary and Proper Clause of the Constitution. That clause empowers Congress to enact "all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution" its enumerated powers. As the Supreme Court has repeatedly explained, the Necessary and Proper Clause does not expand the scope of Congress's enumerated powers. Instead, it gives Congress the ability to select among various means of exercising them — for example, the enumerated power to "establish post offices" necessarily and properly includes a power to print stamps.
The Obama administration claimed that the individual mandate is a necessary and proper means of carrying out its reforms in the health-insurance market. These reforms include requiring insurers to offer coverage to those with pre- existing conditions, to extend coverage to dependents up to age 26, and to eliminate lifetime coverage caps. Because these reforms make health insurance more expensive, the government's lawyers claim that unless everyone is forced to buy health insurance, too many healthy people will sit on the market sidelines as "free riders" until they become ill. So in order to make the "reformed" health-insurance market work, it's necessary and proper to force everyone to buy insurance.
http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=12749
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