Medical Doctors for Single Payer Urge Supreme Court to Strike Down Individual Insurance Mandate

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18. Yes they do; It is precidented; first mandate to purchse was 1792

Just two years after the constitution became the law of the land, the nation's Second Congress, a body that included influential founders such as Aaron Burr and Rufus King, along with the aptly named James Gunn of Georgia, passed the nation's first individual mandate in 1792.

Like the individual mandate at issue in the health care overhaul legislation, Congress passed this early mandate in realization of the fact that the health and safety of all Americans requires individuals relinquishing a modicum of personal freedom for the benefit of themselves and their neighbors. But obviously, the Second Congress did not require Americans to buy health insurance (a product that wouldn't exist as we know it for more than 150 years) but rather, the federal government required Americans to purchase firearms, ammunition, and the essential accessories required for military service.

Congress required that essentially every white male between 18 and 45 years old purchase: "a good musket or firelock, a sufficient bayonet and belt, two spare flints, and a knapsack, a pouch, with a box therein, to contain not less than twenty four cartridges, suited to the bore of his musket or firelock, each cartridge to contain a proper quantity of powder and ball; or with a good rifle, knapsack, shot-pouch, and powder-horn, twenty balls suited to the bore of his rifle, and a quarter of a pound of powder . . . ."