White House Will Appeal Health Care Ruling

The Obama administration said it will appeal a Florida judge’s ruling that last year’s Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act overstepped limits on congressional power by compelling people to buy insurance. U.S. District Judge Roger Vinson said this week’s ruling is based on the logic that if the government required citizens to purchase health care insurance, they could also force Americans to buy clothes or food.  Because the insurance mandate is central to the legislation, the entire law must be voided, he said.

The White House was quick to respond: "The judge's decision contradicts decades of Supreme Court precedent that support the considered judgment of the democratically elected branches of government that the act's individual responsibility provision is necessary to prevent billions of dollars of cost-shifting every year by individuals without insurance who cannot pay for the health care they obtain," White House adviser Stephanie Cutter wrote in an Internet posting.

Appointed to the federal bench by President Ronald Reagan in 1983, Vinson is an ex-Navy pilot who, throughout his career, has heard cases from abortion clinic bombings to veterans’ rights to racial discrimination.

Vinson’s ruling that the Obama administration's health care overhaul is unconstitutional is the latest in a series of actions intended to derail the President’s legislation.

On the day Obama signed into law the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, legislation intended to provide the U.S. with almost universal health-care coverage, the state of Florida sued on behalf of 13 other states. By the time Judge Vinson announced his decision, 25 additional states joined Florida’s suit. Virginia sued separately on March 23 and Oklahoma filed its own suit on Jan. 21.

To date, three other courts have weighed in on the law, with two of them upholding it. In the third case, U.S. District Judge Henry Hudson in Richmond, Virginia, voided the mandatory-coverage component, while allowing the rest of the law to stand, note reports. An appeal of the Virginia ruling and of a decision upholding the law are slated to go before a Richmond federal appeals court in May.

There is much at stake with this decision for providers, payers and patients, as the law also prohibits insurers from denying coverage to people who are sick and from imposing lifetime limits on costs. In addition, it includes other elements that appear less arguable, such as pilot projects to test ideas, for example, incentives for better results and bundled payments to medical teams for patient care.

And while some see this ruling as a judicial blow to Obama’s efforts, champions of the law note that Vinson’s analogy is flawed. Jonathan Cohn, editor with National Public Radio online, notes that perhaps the clearest indicator of bias in the decisions against the Affordable Care Act is the gist of the decisions themselves.

“For generations, conservatives have championed "judicial restraint." If judicial restraint means anything, it means deferring to the Congress on matters of policy preference — like, for example, whether it's better to run a national health insurance system with a system of regulated private insurance (which is what people will get with the Affordable Care Act) rather than via a single-payer, government-run plan (which is what the elderly already get with Medicare). But if these decisions by Judges Vinson and Hudson carry the day — and, please remember, two federal judges have already ruled the other way — they would effectively take that discretion away from the Congress,” he wrote.

“We are analyzing this opinion to determine what steps, if any -- including seeking a stay -- are necessary while the appeal is pending to continue our progress toward ensuring that Americans do not lose out on the important protections this law provides,” Tracy Schmaler, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Justice Department, said in a statement yesterday.

If appealed, it would go before the U.S. Court of Appeals in Atlanta. The U.S. Supreme Court may ultimately be asked to consider the issue.

For information on how the ruling may affect HIPPA-related technology initiatives, click here.

For reprint and licensing requests for this article, click here.
Core systems Compliance Policy adminstration Security risk
MORE FROM DIGITAL INSURANCE