Over the course of the campaign, President Obama repeatedly promised: “If you like your current insurance, you can keep your current insurance”—despite any reforms his Administration would implement. This claim is far from true, as Amy B. Monahan and Daniel Schwarcz illustrate in their 2011 study “Will Employers Undermine Health Care Reform by Dumping Sick Employees?” published in the Virginia Law Review. Schwarcz presented the study on Capitol Hill last week. Obamacare mandates that employers provide health insurance for their employees or pay a fine. With the increasing cost of …
Is the individual mandate at the heart of “ObamaCare” a conservative idea? Is it constitutional? And was it invented at The Heritage Foundation? In a word, no. The U.S. Supreme Court will put the middle issue to rest. The answers to the first and last can come from me. After all, I headed Heritage’s health work for 30 years. And make no mistake: Heritage and I actively oppose the individual mandate, including in an amicus brief filed in the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals to the Supreme Court. Nevertheless, the …
Today, the Supreme Court released the oral argument schedule for the consolidated Obamacare challenges. The Court will hear oral argument on March 26, 27 and 28, 2012, with a nearly unprecedented amount of time allotted for argument. First up on March 26, the Court will hear argument on the Anti-Injunction Act, which bars suits to stop a tax before it has been imposed. The second day, the Court will hear two hours of argument on the minimum coverage provision, also known as the individual mandate. On the third and final …
It’s official. The Supreme Court will consider challenges to Obamacare stemming from the Eleventh Circuit decision striking down the law’s individual mandate. In that case, 26 states and the National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB) partially won their suit, claiming that the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) should be voided as unconstitutional. The Eleventh Circuit ruled that the mandate — considered by many to be the linchpin of the overhaul of the U.S. health system — was unconstitutional. But the court declined to strike down the law in its …
As expected, the Supreme Court has decided to take up the court cases challenging Obamacare’s individual mandate and the question of whether the whole law should be struck down if the Court finds the mandate unconstitutional. This is another important step toward undoing this unpopular and unworkable health care law. Recall the process by which the law came to be: Due to the special circumstances of Senator Scott Brown’s election, the House and Senate (under duress) jammed through the poorly drafted health care law, bypassing the normal conference process intended …
We understand that the White House is experiencing some difficulties of late across many fronts—the Solyndra scandal and Operation Fast and Furious are two issues that come to mind. That, however, does not give spokesman Jay Carney license to misrepresent what The Heritage Foundation supports or does not. Yesterday Mr. Carney once again defended Obamacare, this time by strongly implying that we think the health care law is wise and Constitutional. Specifically, the spokesman said: We note that not only have lower courts upheld its constitutionality, but the fact of the individual mandate …
Obamacare has suffered a devastating blow. On Friday, the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the individual mandate in President Barack Obama’s signature health care legislation is unconstitutional. With its ruling, the court affirmed the principle that the Constitution means what it says—Congress does not have unfettered power to force the American people to comply with any and all dictates it creates. The federal government’s argument in favor of Obamacare’s individual mandate, in contrast, is without limit—and it’s a position that the court strongly rejected: The government’s position amounts to …
This afternoon, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta ruled that the individual mandate in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), more commonly known as Obamacare, is unconstitutional. The carefully worded and thorough (over 300 page) set of opinions may be a bit mind-numbing for the uninitiated, but they are a joy to read for those of us who think the words of the Constitution actually mean something beyond whatever an activist Congress, President, and pliant judge want them to mean. The …
The American Medical Association lost 5 percent of its membership last year as the physician group faced fallout from its endorsement of Obamacare and refusal to retreat from the law’s most controversial provisions. As physicians and medical school students back away from the well-known organization, they’re turning to upstarts like Docs4PatientCare and the Benjamin Rush Society, two alternatives to the AMA. Docs4PatientCare maintains contact with about 4,000 physicians who are primarily concerned about preserving the doctor-patient relationship. Many of them became active after the AMA’s endorsement of Obamacare in 2009. …
Yesterday, The Heritage Foundation filed a friend-of-the-court brief with the 11th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals, reiterating Heritage’s opposition to the individual mandate that is a key piece of the Obamacare statute. This is the first time we have ever filed such a brief—as far anyone around here can remember. But we had no other choice. In its merits brief before the appeals court, the U.S. government quoted a 21-year-old statement by a Heritage Foundation policy expert supporting an individual mandate for health insurance, when Heritage’s view today is to the …
