JOHN BAKER on Medical Malpractice And Fair Weather Federalism. “House Republicans hope to nationalize medical malpractice law, which is traditionally a matter of state tort law, by passing H.R. 5, a bill that would wipe out all state medical malpractice laws and complete the nationalization of healthcare. Passage of H.R. 5 would undercut arguments that Obamacare is unconstitutional. To justify their efforts to nationalize medical malpractice law, House Republicans are stretching the Supreme Court’s New Deal Commerce Clause jurisprudence almost as far as Democrats did for Obamacare. Both national medical malpractice reform and Obamacare are radically at odds with our constitutional structure of federalism, though Obamacare is especially radical because it represents the first time that the federal government has required people to purchase a product (health insurance).”