The health care bill was effectively implemented as a tax bill. The entire structure of the bill is a set of rules and initiatives set up to encourage businesses and individuals to get or provide health insurance through a series of tax raises and tax cuts.
The tax code is the mechanism through which this policy is implemented. I'd love to hear what other mechanism you'd prefer for implementing a health care plan. (And copping out by saying "it shouldn't have been implemented" isn't gonna fly)
If they were going to actually try to implement national health care it should be done as constitutional amendment.
Are you seriously going to argue that "Armies" doesn't include the Air Force?
An Amendment wasn't required to create the Air Force any more than it was required to create the DHS, or is required to create any other Federal agency. Congress has the power to create, destroy, and reorganize Federal agencies as it wants to. So in 1947, Congress created the Department of Defense as a Federal Department, which the Constitution allows them to do, and put the Army, Navy, and Air Force (new) under it. There wasn't anything even vaguely unconstitutional about it, even taking a really uncharitable reading.
Congress creates new Departments fairly regularly; there wasn't a need to go through the amendment process for the DoD any more than there was to create the Departments of State, Transportation, Energy, Labor, Education... etc. All it takes to create one is the same process to pass any other piece of legislation.
I would personally not be against requiring an amendment to create new agencies, just on the grounds of controlling governmental scope creep, but that's not the way things are set up. Congress has been creating Departments since the ink was barely dry on the Constitution itself.
I still don't understand your comparison to Obamacare. Are you asserting that the constitution would authorize Obamacare with some tweaks to heirerarchy? Please explain.
I don't see the changes as being remotely comparable in magnitude.