Thirty-five economists have filed a friend-of-the-court brief in the Florida-led multi-sate lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act. The Florida case alleges that the law’s minimum coverage requirement — also known as the individual mandate — represents an “unprecedented encroachment on the liberty of individuals living in the Plaintiffs’ respective states” and violates the Commerce Clause of the Constitution. “The Act is directed to a lack of or failure to engage in activity that is driven by the choices of individual Americans. Such inactivity by its nature cannot be deemed to be in commerce or to have any substantial effect on commerce, whether interstate or otherwise,” the suit contends. “As a result, the Act cannot be upheld under the Commerce Clause, Const. art. I, § 8.” In October, U.S. District Court Judge Roger Vinson dismissed three of the Plaintiff’s claims, but allowed their challenge to the law’s minimum coverage provision and a separate complaint about the law’s Medicaid expansion provision to move forward.

The group of 35 economists — which includes three Nobel Prize winners and two recipients of the John Bates Clark award for the Outstanding American economist aged 40 and under — contends that the Plaintiffs’ arguments against the minimum coverage requirement ignore the fact that health care is different from every other sector of the economy. As CAP Senior Fellow David Cutler, one of the signatories to the letter, argues in this memo, “the minimum coverage requirement is ‘necessary to achieving’ Congress’ goal of reforming the national health insurance market and making quality medical care available to millions of Americans.” The economists lay out their case in three points:

1. Once can’t leave the medical market: Because of unforeseen illness, accident, or simply the aging process, all people are at risk of needing medical care, and when they do, such care cannot be put off. Over half of the uninsured use medical care in a typical year.

2. Care must still be provided to those in need: The Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act, which requires hospitals to care for those in acute need, whether they can pay or not, is not present in any other market.

3. Costs of caring for uninsured shifted to the insured: Over $40 billion of medical spending annually is shifted from the uninsured to the insured in the form of ‘cost shifting.’ Billions more are paid for when the uninsured become insured and use more care for untreated conditions.

“In other words, the minimum coverage requirement is a ‘necessary and appropriate response to the unique economic features of the health care market,’” Cutler writes. “The ‘parade of horribles’ – the idea that allowing the minimum coverage requirement will open the door to every other form of regulation the government might want – that conservatives argue will result from sanctioning this action is simply incorrect.”

Hearings in the case begin on December 16th. Read the entire memo and the list of economists HERE. The amicus brief can be found HERE.

A former senior health care advisor to President Barack Obama and a prominent advocate of the Affordable Care Act predicted that Republicans will shut down the federal government in their efforts to de-fund the health care law. Speaking at a Harvard School of Public Health forum, David Cutler — a Professor of Applied Economics at that university — predicted a stalmate with little chance of resolution, given the new Republican majority in the House:

CUTLER: We are likely to have an immense stalemate and I would not be surprised if we shut down the federal government over funding of discretionary health care early next year, the debt ceiling limit, the physicians’ payments. There will be about 10 opportunities to shut down the government. If we’re not going to shut them down, each time we’ll have to compromise and that strikes me as somewhat unlikely. [...]

We will go through a burning bridge, I’m not quite sure of the right analogy, in the next few months. We will either have have or come increasingly close to having a government shut down and we will probably not have any agreement on how to move forward on health care, except with the idea that maybe the 2012 elections will settle a little bit more and that’s in part because there are no wise men, I think on the Republican side who are willing to meet anyone half way.

Watch it:

The forum focused on the Impact of the “2010 Elections on U.S. Healthcare Reform,” but also delved deeply into policy specifics about cost control mechanisms and the policy specifics in the Affordable Care Act. Another panelist, Douglas Holtz-Eakin, the former McCain campaign advisor and CBO director, predicted that Republicans will “unwind” the bill through the discretionary spending process. “It will slow down the implementation and in that way put it on a timetable to coincide with the 2012 election… that’s when this whole point will be resolved,” he said.

Yesterday, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) suggested that Republicans would not shut down the government over the issue, telling CNN’s John King, “we’re not talking about shutting down the government. What we’re doing here is talking about responding to the American people’s desire that this bill not become law.”