Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) said Wednesday that the comparisons between the Affordable Care Act and eating broccoli — which Justice Antonin Scalia invoked Tuesday — don’t hold up.
“It isn’t about eating broccoli, folks,” Kerry told reporters. “There’s no other economic commodity in the entire marketplace like health care. Like it or not, at some point in our lives, every single person will receive health care.”
Standing between the Capitol and in front of the Supreme Court during Wednesday’s oral arguments, he made the case for the law’s constitutionality.
“Congress’s power to regulate interstate commerce is certainly broad enough to encompass the way the law was written,” Kerry said. “The Supreme Court has interpreted this power to mean … if the economic activity being regulated, taken in the aggregate, has a substantial effect on interstate commerce, it’s permissible.”
