Well, this is very interesting. It seemed the Founding Fathers, and any number of the framers of the Constitution had no trouble with individual mandates. Check out this article.
Personally I wish we’d fought for Medicare for all rather than this mess that is a gift to the frackin’ insurance companies, but I’ll take anything that doesn’t leave me without health care because of my pre-existing condition.
While you’re looking into the matter, you might like to look at this dissenting point of view:
http://volokh.com/2012/04/19/phillip-hamburger-on-the-maritime-acts/
The poster, Randy L. Barnett, is a constitutional lawyer and the author of [i]Reclaiming the Lost Constitution[/i]. Philip Hamburger, whom he quotes, is a legal historian.