White House Vows To Implement Health Care Reform, Despite Judge’s Ruling
Senior administration officials vowed on Monday to continue with the full implementation of President Obama’s health care reform law despite a federal judge’s decision declaring the law unconstitutional and void in its entirety.
“This is not the last word by any means,” a White House official told reporters in a background briefing. “We are quite confident it won’t stand.”
The Justice Department issued a statement saying it intends to appeal the decision. “We strongly disagree with the court’s ruling,” the statement says in part.
How much do you know about the US Constitution? A quiz.
The comments came in reaction to a 78-page decision released Monday by US District Judge Roger Vinson in Pensacola, Fla. The judge ruled that Congress exceeded its power under the Constitution’s commerce clause when it required all Americans to purchase health insurance as part of the president’s health-carereform law.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/csm/360220
Federal Judge Rules That Health Law Violates Constitution
By KEVIN SACK
A second federal judge ruled on Monday that it was unconstitutional for Congress to enact a health care law that required Americans to obtain commercial insurance, evening the score at 2 to 2 in the lower courts as conflicting opinions begin their path to the Supreme Court.
But unlike a Virginia judge in December, Judge Roger Vinson of Federal District Court in Pensacola, Fla., concluded that the insurance requirement was so “inextricably bound” to other provisions of the Affordable Care Act that its unconstitutionality required the invalidation of the entire law.
“The act, like a defectively designed watch, needs to be redesigned and reconstructed by the watchmaker,” Judge Vinson wrote.
Concierge Medical Care With a Smaller Price Tag
By KATIE HAFNER
SAN FRANCISCO — When Jennifer Contreras went to see her new physician, she had hardly arrived in the waiting room before she was called in — by the doctor herself.
That was a pleasant surprise, but it was just the beginning. Ms. Contreras, 40, was prepared for a short visit, but the physician seemed to have all the time in the world. Then came another surprise.
After noting Ms. Contreras’s high blood pressure, the doctor told her to take her blood pressure daily using a home monitor and send her an e-mail with each result.
“We did all the careful fine-tuning over e-mail until we got just the right dosage of blood pressure medication,” said Ms. Contreras, an associate dean at the University of San Francisco. “It wasn’t just ‘Oh, take this medication and I’ll see you later.’ It was ‘Let’s make sure we get this right.’ ”
Ms. Contreras is a patient at One Medical Group, a new model for primary care that aims to set a nationwide example. With 31 physicians in San Francisco and New York, it offers most of the same services provided by personalized “concierge” medical practices, but at a much lower price: $150 to $200 a year.
The Charge To Fix Or Improve The New Health Law
States Diverge on How to Deal With Health Care Ruling
By KEVIN SACK, DAVID M. HERSZENHORN and ROBERT PEAR
States took broadly divergent approaches on Tuesday to a federal judge’s ruling that invalidated the Obama health care law, while Congressional Republicans used the decision to build momentum for a vote on repealing the act.
The Senate’s Democratic leaders answered the Republican challenge by saying they would stage a vote on the repeal measure on Wednesday, when they were certain it would be defeated. The House, where Republicans won a majority in November’s elections, approved the repeal last month.
“We want to get this out of their system very quickly,” the Senate majority leader, Harry Reid of Nevada, said at a news conference in Washington.
Tea Party Shadows Health Care Ruling
By KEVIN SACK
Among the legal commentariat, which blogs its instant analysis after each turn in the health care litigation, one assertion in Monday’s ruling against the law by Judge Roger Vinson is receiving particular attention.
“It is difficult to imagine,” Judge Vinson, of Federal District Court in Pensacola, Fla., wrote in a central passage of his 78-page opinion, “that a nation which began, at least in part, as the result of opposition to a British mandate giving the East India Company a monopoly and imposing a nominal tax on all tea sold in America would have set out to create a government with the power to force people to buy tea in the first place.”
Supporters of the health care act — which Judge Vinson invalidated after ruling it was unconstitutional to require citizens to buyhealth insurance — saw in the language a deliberate nod to the Tea Party movement.
Awaiting Health Law’s Prognosis
By REED ABELSON
With a court decision on Monday declaring the health care law unconstitutional and Republicans intent on repealing at least parts of it, thousands of Americans with major illnesses are facing the renewed prospect of losing their health insurance coverage.
The legislation put an end to lifetime limits on coverage for the first time, erasing the financial burdens, including personal bankruptcy, that had affected many ailing Americans.
For example, Hillary St. Pierre, a 28-year-old former registered nurse who has Hodgkin’s lymphoma, had expected to reach her insurance plan’s $2 million limit this year. Under the new law, the cap was eliminated when the policy she gets through her husband’s employer was renewed this year.
Ms. St. Pierre, who has already come close once before to losing her coverage because she had reached the plan’s maximum, says she does not know what she will do if the cap is reinstated. “I will be forced to stop treatment or to alter my treatment,” Ms. St. Pierre, who lives in Charlestown, N.H., with her husband and son, said in an e-mail. “I will find a way to continue and survive, but who is going to pay?”
Prospects for Private Health Insurance
By REED ABELSONOne of the major concerns about the new health care law is whether it will usher in the demise of employer-based coverage, which is the source of insurance for the bulk of working Americans today.
A new report from Booz & Company, the management consulting firm, suggests that much of the worry that private health insurance will disappear is misplaced.
Affordable Care Act Repeal Would Be A Costly Mistake — Maine Opinion — Bangor Daily News
Attorney General William Schneider and the governor are making a mistake in seeking to join the lawsuit of state attorneys general against the Affordable Care Act. We stand to lose a lot if that act is repealed or struck down.
I wonder if the two believe the falsehoods told about the law, such as that it will increase the deficit by $550 billion, and that it contains death panels. None of this is true. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office announced its most recent estimate on Jan. 6; the legislation would save the Treasury $230 billion over the next decade.
The big political problem with the Affordable Care Act is that it is so big and complicated that hardly anyone knows what’s in it. People fear what they do not understand. But there are a few things that we would lose if the law is repealed.
iew: Court Doing Its Job In Health Reform Case
But Congress should do its job, and fix the law where possible instead of grandstanding.
If you don't like the federal health care program signed into law by President Obama last March – and count us among those who don't – Monday's decision by a federal judge in Florida was good news.
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