Just a week after the passage of the sweeping health-care reform bill, a physicians' association is suing to have the law overturned because the doctors believe it contains numerous violations of the U.S. Constitution.
Secretary of Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and Social Security Administration Commissioner Michael Astrue are named as the defendants in the lawsuit, which was brought to the federal district court in Washington, D.C., by the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS), a group of physicians that believe they are already over regulated.
"If the (bill) goes unchallenged, then it spells the end of freedom in medicine as we know it," said Dr. Jane Orient, the executive director of AAPS. "Courts should not allow this massive intrusion into the practice of medicine and the rights of patients."
The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), which President Obama signed into law last week, will cover over 30 million uninsured Americans largely by expanding the reach of Medicaid and imposing an individual mandate to purchase health insurance. It is funded partly by a half-trillion dollars in cuts to Medicare. AAPS has issues with all of the provisions.
In AAPS v. Sebelius, the physicians' group, which includes several conservative members of Congress who are doctors, said the health-care law violates "various restrictions on federal action" found in Article I of the Constitution, along with the Fifth Amendment, the Tenth Amendment, the Medicare Act, the Social Security Act, and the Administrative Procedure Act.
Specifically, the group would like the court to:
-- overturn the mandate for everyone to purchase health insurance "as outside the authority of Congress to enact and the federal government to enforce";
-- to declare the federal government's imposition of standards for qualifying plans as impermissible;
-- to declare the bill "unenforceable in its entirety" because it "cannot because funded without the insurance mandates";
-- and to order that Sebelius and Astrue "submit an accounting on the solvency of Medicare and Social Security," from which the government intends to use $500 billion and $50 billion respectively to fund the bill.
"The requested relief is necessary to preserve individual liberty and choice under Social Security, as well as to prevent the PPACA from bankrupting the United States generally and Medicare and Social Security specifically and from unconstitutionally denying individual (and state) liberty from ultra vires federal dictates," the group said in its complaint.
Ultra vires claims are any made outside the enumerated powers of a given entity, such as the Constitution.
AAPS, which Orient estimated to have over 5,000 members, is the first group to challenge the health-care bill on the basis of the Fifth Amendment, the last clause of which says, "nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation."
AAPS legal counsel Lawrence J. Joseph, who submitted the complaint, explained that when the Secretary of Health and Human Services sets criteria that private insurers must meet, she is "spreading costs to private parties" by driving up the cost of premiums. The additional money that customers must pay, Joseph says, "represents a regulatory taking, without just compensation, in violation of the Fifth Amendment."
Orient concurred, asserting to CNSNews.com that stipulating no discrimination based on pre-existing conditions drives up premiums and takes private dollars for public use.
"If you allow people to buy insurance when they're already sick, just like if you got them to buy homeowner's insurance when their house is burning down, the premiums have to go up – and the community rating increases the premiums of all people who are at lower risk, especially the young and the healthy," she said. "They will be required to subsidize those who have an unhealthy lifestyle, those who are just older, those who have chronic diseases, and so they will not be able to buy insurance at a premium that matches the claims they're likely to make."
The Fifth Amendment argument joins a cavalcade of other constitutional grievances that also appear in this suit and are often invoked by conservatives. For one, the lawsuit challenges the notion that the Commerce Clause in Article I, which allows Congress to regulate interstate transactions, applies to the bill.
Congressional Democrats have relied upon it heavily to justify the bill's provisions, but the AAPS lawsuit claims that "Nothing in Article I or elsewhere in the U.S. Constitution authorizes the federal government to require individual citizens, with no direct connection to or contract with the federal government, to purchase health insurance, and nothing in Article I or elsewhere in the U.S. Constitution authorizes the federal government to set the acceptable terms of health insurance for individuals."
Additionally, the suit claims that the health-care reform bill violates the Tenth Amendment, which reserves the powers not enumerated in the Constitution for the federal government to lie with the states.
The congressional Democratic leadership, however, has disagreed. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) released a fact sheet in September arguing the constitutionality of the bill after many of her members received brutal welcomes from the seeds of the Tea Party in their home districts during the summer recess.
In it, the Speaker's Office takes the position that the Tenth Amendment cannot restrict the federal government's Commerce Clause powers, which it says they say are "essentially unlimited" in the health care realm.
"Congress has used this authority to regulate many aspects of American life, from labor relations to education to health care to agricultural production. Since virtually every aspect of the heath care system has an effect on interstate commerce, the power of Congress to regulate health care is essentially unlimited."
That kind of regulation, however, could have dire consequences for the health care industry, according to the president of AAPS, Dr. Orient.
"A huge number of decisions are being delegated to the Secretary of Health and Human Services concerning what's to be covered, what's to be paid for, practices guidelines, priorities to be set," she said. "(A) lot of small practices or solo physicians will be driven out of practice simply because they cannot afford to meet all of the bureaucratic requirements for documentation and recording and keeping track of thing. So, we're going to see a dramatic transformation in the way medicine is practiced."
Doctors will not be working for the good of their individual patients, she said, but rather they will be forced to be meeting the societal goals that are imposed by central planners."
The suit was filed March 26, in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia and will now await scheduling.
Orient said several members of Congress were among the ranks of the AAPS, including Reps. Dr. Paul Broun (R-Ga.), Dr. Tom Price (R-Ga.), Dr. Ron Paul (R-Tex.) and Dr. Michael Burgess (R-Tex.).
Contact: Christopher Neefus
Source: CNSNews.com
Publish Date: March 31, 2010
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