The constitution does not guarntee that the state or federal government will protect you from all harm and ill what it guarntess you is the ability to have choices that are suppose to be protected. Further I do not see the constitution guarnteeing that any group will pay to provide some other group a benefit.
The Constitution may not not guarantee that the federal government will protect citizens from everything, but it clearly gives Congress the authority to act in the general welfare of the citizenry, even when those actions favor one group over another. For instance, public funding of roadway maintenance and the taking of people's property to build new roads could be argued as unfair to those who don't drive; however, the societal benefits of allowing citizens to travel freely clearly outweigh the negative consequences. The relative merits of other social programs may be less clear, but the underlying concept is not.
IMHO enacting a universal health system, along with other social programs, is clearly within the authority of Congress under the General Welfare Clause. The way such a program is supposed to work is fairly straightforward: the government collects tax money and distributes it based on certain legal criteria. Some people may pay more taxes than others, some people may be exempted from the tax, and some people may derive no direct benefits from the program, but that is the nature of the beast. On some level, this is true of almost everything the federal, state, and local government does. If one wishes the argue about the fairness or cost/benefit ratio of a particular program, that's what the elected legislative process is for.
The fundamental problem here is that the government is attempting to implement a social benefit
without a social program, telling the citizens that they must pay for it themselves, and justifying all of this under a constitutional provision intended to allow the regulation of trade.
If a social benefit is justified, then enact a social program and pay for it the normal way, with taxes! As stated in the Volokh Conspiracy link earlier in the thread, the health care mandate essentially amounts to Congress declaring that it has a general police power under the Commerce Clause. What's next, a regulation requiring citizens to eat their green vegetables in order to avoid government penalties?
I also think the judicial system needs to be reformed in that laws as they are proposed within the house and senate should be required to have some level of supreme court review prior to ratification and enforcement so that our freedoms as citizens arent always awaiting someone to file suit on one infringment or another.
I have a real problem with the idea of legislation having to be pre-approved by a non-elected council serving lifetime terms of office. This smacks of monarchy, aristocracy, or, worse yet, theocracy. FWIW one prominent country has embraced this idea, and they call this body the Guardian Council.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guardian_Council