The attorney general of Massachusetts, the state on which much of the federal health reform law is based, has filed a brief supporting the federal law.
Martha Coakley
Martha Coakley, Massachusetts’ attorney general, filed a brief in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, supporting the federal Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) and the Obama Administration’s battle against Virginia’s opposition to the health reform law.
The appeals court in Richmond, Va., is being asked to review the decision of Henry Hudson, a U.S. District Court judge in Virginia, who ruled in December 2010 that Congress exceeded its authority by imposing the requirement that every American buy insurance or face a fine, starting in January 2014.
President Barack Obama and Democrats have called the Massachusetts’ health care reform law as a blueprint for the PPACA, passed in March 2010.
In her brief, Coakley argues that the successful results from the Massachusetts law enacted in 2006, including a reduction of the number of uninsured people utilizing the “free-care” pool (so-called “free riders”), demonstrate that Congress had a rational and constitutional basis to enact an individual coverage requirement in PPACA.
“Massachusetts is uniquely positioned to show the benefits of health care reform on a national level,” Coakley said in a statement. The state’s law, creating the Health Connectors, insured 97% of its residents and “that has resulted in a significant decrease in state spending on ‘free care’ for the uninsured,” Coakley added.
“The benefits of health care reform in Massachusetts – passed with overwhelming bi-partisan support – are a clear demonstration of the basis by which Congress chose to address the health care crisis on a national level,” Coakley said.
The Virginia case, filed by that state’s attorney general, Ken Cuccinelli, resulted from the Virginia General Assembly’s passage of a law saying it would not comply with mandates included in the federal reform law, essentially pitting the state’s law against the federal reform law.
The Virginia suit is one of more than 20 challenging the federal law. So far, three federal judges have ruled the law constitutional and the Virginia judge, Henry Hudson, and a judge in Florida, Roger Vinson, have ruled the law unconstitutional. Yet calls for the U.S. Supreme Court to intervene have not been answered by the high court.
The federal minimum essential coverage provision at issue in this case is modeled on a similar provision in Massachusetts law, which requires most Massachusetts residents to obtain health insurance. Based on Massachusetts’ experience, Coakley argues that preventing healthy people from foregoing health insurance until they are sick or injured (a practice referred to as “free-riding”), generates substantial economic benefits.
According to Coakley’s brief, Massachusetts’ experience with health care reform demonstrates that Congress had a rational basis for concluding that free-riding by individuals, taken in the aggregate, has a substantial effect upon commerce, and that reducing or eliminating free-riding will benefit the health insurance market as a whole.
Among the tangible benefits of health care reform in Massachusetts cited in the attorney general’s brief include:
An increase in the number of insured residents to more than 97% of the state’s population in 2009, up from 87.5% in 2006, giving Massachusetts the lowest rate of uninsured residents in the country;
The gains in Massachusetts residents with health insurance spurred a corresponding sharp decline in the amount of state spending on “free care” for the uninsured and underinsured. The costs of free care dropped from $709.5 million in fiscal year 2006 to $414 million in fiscal year 2009.
Coakley also argues that that despite Massachusetts’s intrastate “success” in improving access to quality health care and reducing spending on “free care,” national health care reform such as that embodied in the federal law, “is required to grapple with interstate (and international) health care trends that individual states – acting alone – have little power to influence.”
Mass. AG says state’s ‘success’ justifies federal health reform law via IFAwebnews .
No related posts.