This is the question being asked by twenty different states right now. Minutes after President Obama signed the new Health Care Bill into law in March of 2010, it was challenged. Florida’s Republican Attorney General Bill McCollum was the first one to file a lawsuit, and a similar one has been unfolding in Virginia. It seems that the current lawsuit might end up before the U.S. Supreme Court.
So far, the only part of the Affordable Care Act that consumers have had access to is the Pre-existing Condition insurance plan. This is a form of government run health insurance that might be available to American’s who have applied for health insurance at private companies, and have been turned down because of a pre-existing condition. This is just the first in a series of reforms that will take place.
U.S. District Judge Roger Vinson has been asked by the Obama administration to dismiss the entire lawsuit. So far, the judge has said he might dismiss parts of the lawsuit, but not the entire lawsuit itself. He will issue a ruling on this case by October 14, 2010. After the ruling is revealed, there is every expectation that this case will end up being heard by the Supreme Court.
The basic disagreement is over whether or not people should be required to have health insurance. There is also the question about if states should have to pay the additional Medicaid costs that are not covered by the federal government, that may arise as a result of the new Health Care Reform.
As with all lawsuits, there are two sides to consider. Attorneys for the Administration feel that if Judge Vinson upholds the challenge made by twenty states, he would be overturning decades of laws that enforced the federal government’s power to regulate interstate commerce. They also point out that the section that requires everyone to have health insurance doesn’t take effect until 2015, and then it would be up to individual taxpayers, not the states, to challenge the law. There is an argument that no one is able to keep out of the health care market, since even healthy people can “get hit by a bus” and require serious health care.
The attorney representing the states, on the other hand, believes that the health care reform laws will destroy the sovereignty of the states by burdening them with Medicaid costs that would be out of control. This side also feels that the government is not allowed to tax people for not taking an action, in this case, for not buying health insurance. There is also an argument that if the Health Care Reform laws are upheld, that there is nothing stopping the government from forcing people to purchase a package plan for mortgages. This is how the Health Care Reform laws are being likened to the subprime mortgage crisis.
Image by Brian Turner on Flickr