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Despite Court
Action We Must Still Work for Legislative Repeal of
Obama Health Care Law
Part Two of Four Recently, a federal district court judge in Florida ruled that the Obama Healthcare Law is unconstitutional. Judge Roger Vinson went far further than any other court to date and actually overturned the entire law. While groups opposed to the law are encouraged by this ruling, it is important that those concerned about rationing not slacken their efforts to bring about legislative repeal in the hope that a court order will make that unnecessary.
It is important to keep two facts in perspective: First, it is the U.S. Supreme Court that will ultimately decide the constitutional challenges to the Obama Healthcare Law, and the importance of what any lower court has to say is the extent to which its reasoning helps to persuade the Justices on the Supreme Court. Second, the constitutional challenges are centered on the law's mandate that virtually all Americans obtain health insurance, rather than on the rationing the law would impose. Even if the Supreme Court strikes down the individual mandate, it is far from certain that the entire law would be voided, meaning the rationing provisions would still be intact. Up until this point, around a dozen lawsuits against the Obama Healthcare Law have been filed, and many have been thrown out of court. To date, there have been four opinions on the merits at the federal district court level, two upholding the Obama Healthcare Law, a Virginia federal district court opinion striking just the individual mandate, and, most recently, the Florida federal district court opinion. Opponents of the Obama Healthcare Law are excited as the Florida district court was the first (and only) court to overturn the entire law. But if the Supreme Court found the mandate unconstitutional, it is unknown whether the High Court would also find the rest of the law so reliant upon the mandate as to require overturning the entire law, as did Judge Vinson. Those in favor of the individual mandate argue that it is essential to Obamacare. They say that by requiring everyone to have health insurance by 2014, the mandate will reduce the high cost (to health care providers) of treating the uninsured. They also say the mandate will bring more young healthy people into the insurance pool, and the premiums they pay will help to offset the costs of requiring insurance companies to cover everyone else. Judge Vinson's opinion took the position that the mandate is so entwined with the rest of the law that, if it is unconstitutional, the rest of the law must fall as well. He wrote, "The act, like a defectively designed watch, needs to be redesigned and reconstructed by the watchmaker." Despite his reasoned argument that leaving the law in place without an individual mandate would amount to unacceptable 'quasi-legislating,'we cannot know if the U.S. Supreme Court will follow suit and strike the entire statute, or even if it will strike the mandate. Despite Judge Vinson's ruling, implementation of the Obama Healthcare Law is expected to continue for the present. Over the next several months, we can expect the various court decisions to go through the appeal process. It is widely believed that because of its importance this issue will come before the U.S. Supreme Court in a more accelerated fashion than other cases. (Indeed, Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli has asked the Supreme Court to take the extraordinary step of bypassing the intermediate federal courts of appeal and taking up the matter based just on the district court opinions.) It is important to understand that even if the individual mandate is ultimately overturned, it is the rest of the Obama Healthcare Law that causes rationing. The law has a maze of provisions that empower the federal Department Health and Human Services (HHS), based on recommendations by the Independent Payment Advisory Board, to limit what health care providers can do to save the lives of your family members. Another provision gives HHS bureaucrats authority to limit or eliminate the one option that has existed in Medicare under which seniors who chose to do so may add their own money to the government contribution so as to obtain health insurance plans that allow them better access to providers and life-saving medical treatments. Yet another portion of the law will limit the right of Americans of all ages to use your own money to save your family members' lives through regulations placed upon insurers who want to participate in the state-based insurance exchanges–regulations that will impact you whether you obtain your health insurance inside or outside an exchange. Finally, the law promotes "patient decision aids" through the "Shared Decisionmaking" program that in practice will attempt to persuade patients against seeking costly life-saving treatment. Full documentation of these provisions is available here: http://www.nrlc.org/healthcarerationing/LifeatRiskLongform.pdf. The bottom line is that it would be a grave mistake, based on an optimistic assumption that repeal will be done for us by the courts, to slacken efforts to educate the American people about the rationing in the Obama Healthcare Law so as to build the support necessary to achieve its legislative repeal in 2013. Please send your comments to daveandrusko@gmail.com. If you like, join those who are following me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/daveha. |
