User:Cbbaldwin/Florida health care reform lawsuit

Florida health care reform lawsuit
State of Florida v. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 10-cv-00091, U.S. District Court, Northern District of Florida (Pensacola) was filed by former Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum on March 23, 2010, hours after the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act was signed into law. The lawsuit was filed on behalf of 13 states attorneys general in the federal court's Northern District of Florida against the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, U.S. Department of Treasury and the U.S. Department of Labor alleging the health care reform law signed by the President was unconstitutional.

Filed mostly by Republican state attorneys general, the lawsuit argues that the ACA violates the commerce clause of the Constitution by forcing people to buy health insurance or pay a penalty by 2014. It also targets the costly expansion of Medicaid, arguing that it infringes on state’s rights and the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution.

The Wall Street Journal called the Florida lawsuit “the most closely watched case in the ongoing political battle overt the health-care overhaul.”

Background
In June of 2009, Washington lawyers David B. Rivkin Jr. and Lee Casey of Baker Hostetler wrote a series of op-eds on the constitutionality of the health-care law in The Wall Street Journal that grabbed the attention of Florida attorney general Bill McCollum; according to Florida deputy Attorney General Joe Jacquot, the pieces “sparked conversation throughout Mr. McCollum's office on ‘state sovereignty and the individual mandate’—the portion of the law that requires all individuals to purchase health insurance.”

While both the Virginia lawsuit and the Florida lawsuit challenge the constitutionality of the “individual mandate,” one of the chief differences between them is that the Florida case is the first court challenge against Medicaid expansion, which opponents believe will sink already struggling state budgets.

Two federal judges appointed by President Bill Clinton upheld the individual mandate in 2010; but a federal judge in Virginia, who was appointed by George W. Bush, struck down the individual mandate in December of 2010, although he declined to block the law’s implementation.

Court decisions in the case
On October 14, 2010, U.S. District Judge Roger Vinson ruled that the U.S. states could proceed with the lawsuit to overturn the new health care reform law. David B. Rivkin Jr., a Washington lawyer hired to represent the plaintiffs, argued that if the government could regulate individual decisions to not purchase health insurance there could be no meaningful limits on federal power. “Congress can regulate commerce,” he said. “But Congress cannot create it.”

The government countered that “decisions to not buy insurance, taken in the aggregate, have a direct effect on commerce because uninsured people still consume health care, and often cannot pay; that uncompensated care is subsidized by others and drives up costs for hospitals, governments and privately insured individuals.”

Vinson dismissed four of six claims the states brought against the health care law but said he saw grounds to proceed on two counts, including one relating to the way critics say it would force huge new spending by state governments. On the issue of the so-called "individual mandate," the law's provision that all Americans obtain health care insurance, Vinson said the plaintiffs had "most definitely stated a plausible claim" for their objections, noting that "the power that the individual mandate seeks to harness is simply without prior precedent.”

Vinson “also noted the difference between regulating an economic activity and attempting to regulate an economic non-activity: Most Commerce Clause cases deal with the former, not the latter.”

"[I]n this case we are dealing with something very different. The individual mandate applies across the board. People have no choice and there is no way to avoid it. Those who fall under the individual mandate either comply with it, or they are penalized. It is not based on an activity that they make the choice to undertake. Rather, it is based solely on citizenship and on being alive. Of course, to say that something is “novel” and “unprecedented” does not necessarily mean that it is “unconstitutional” and “improper.” There may be a first time for anything. But, at this stage of the case, the plaintiffs have most definitely stated a plausible claim with respect to this cause of action''.” --Judge Roger Vinson

On Dec. 16, 2010, Judge Vinson heard oral arguments, days after a Virginia judge ruled that the federal government was overstepping its boundaries by requiring Americans to carry health insurance by 2014.

Plaintiffs, led by outside counsel David Rivkin, argued that expansion of Medicaid would overwhelm state budgets; they also argued “the mandatory coverage provision exceeds the legislative authority of the U.S. Congress to regulate interstate commerce by attempting to control the inaction of the uninsured.”

Government lawyer Ian Heath Gershengorn countered that the $2.5 trillion national health care market was unlike anything else; that those who weren’t purchasing insurance were making the economic decision to pay later or shift the cost (the “uninsured are not inactive … this is not a situation of innocent bystanders standing to the side”).

More states join the lawsuit
On January 19, 2011, the same day the House voted to repeal the law, new Florida Attorney General Pamela Bondi (R) filed a motion in Pensacola federal court to add six new states to the lawsuit including Maine, Wisconsin, Ohio, Kansas, Iowa and Wyoming.

The amended complaint currently features 26 state plaintiffs; additionally, the National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB) joined the lawsuit early on as a co-plaintiff on behalf of its members nationwide. Having allowed the case to proceed in October of 2010, U.S. District Judge Roger Vinson is expected to rule on the motion for summary judgment in early 2011, but the case is likely to be appealed to the Supreme Court.