I have not looked at the case closely, but it is my understanding that the individual mandate of the Affordable Care Act was what was challenged before the U.S. Supreme Court. It wasn't a state challenging the constitutionality of the Medicaid expansion, or anything else. It was specifically about the individual mandate. That was what was the focus of the arguments before the court, and that was primarily what was upheld. No, it is not unconstitutional for the government to force people to buy a commodity like health insurance, the court basically said--at least not the way the ACA was written.

Without the individual mandate, we are told, healthy people would not buy insurance--they would wait until they are sick before they buy insurance--and premiums for those who do want/need to buy insurance will be astronomically high.

Well, I once read that organic produce inflates the price of the entire supply of fresh produce. Maybe it lowers the overall supply because it costs more to produce than non-organic and, therefore, there is less fresh produce available for consumers. I don't remember the specifics. I do know that the writer said that those higher prices mean that low-income people consume less fresh produce and, therefore, have poorer health.

However, something tells me that if the federal government mandated that everybody purchase at least a minimum amount of non-organic produce or pay a tax penalty, and argued that that mandate was needed to make fresh produce affordable for everybody, the Supreme Court would not say that that is constitutional. Why the inconsistency?