Individual Mandate as a Privacy Violation

In the case filed in the Southern District of Mississippi against the individual mandate, the plantiffs make a good case for how the individual mandate violates the privacy protections of individuals in the Constitution.  Most notable are paragraphs 70, 74, and 75.

70:

"...the compelled purchase of health insurance also constitutes the "taking" of private property under the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution.  Requiring Plantiffs to devote a penalty or a percent of their personal income for a purpose which they otherwise would not voluntarily choose based on individual circumstances is an arbitrary and capricious "taking" of property."

74:

"For the purpose of a substantive due process analysis there is no meaningful distinction between a person who asserts a right to contract or associate with another private entity and a person who asserts the right not to enter a contract or to associate with another private entity.  Refusal to enter into a contract in the face of an illegitimate demand for a contract is subject to protection under the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution.  Just as a person has a First Amendment Constitutional right, in certain circumstances, to be free from exercising freedom of speech, Plantiffs in this matter have the Constitutional right to be free from entering a private contract or an involuntary association."

75:

"Moreover, compelling Plantiffs to enter into a private contract to purchase insurance from another entity will legally require them to share private and personal information with the contracting party.  Specifically, by requiring Plantiffs to abide by the Act's individual mandate, Congress is also compelling Plantiffs to fully disclose past medical conditions, habits and behaviors.  Not only will the insurer be privy to all past medical information, Congress's individual mandate will, by necessity, allow the compelled insurer access to Plantiff's present and future medical information of a confidential nature.  If judicially enforceable rights mean anything, then private and confidential medical details certainly merit Constitutional protection.  Plantiffs should not be forced to disclose the most innate details of their past, present and future medical information."

The Plantiffs are making the case here that the individual mandate is considerably more intrusive than other federal mandates.  The Fifth Amendment says "...nor shall private property be taken for public use..."  The argument here is against the federal government compelling individuals to enter into a contract with a private entity that would require the disclosure of private information.  In this sense, the individual mandate is effectively enabling the federal government to force individuals to disclose private informaiton.