Monday, November 14, 2011
Oklahoma City – Oklahoma Insurance Commissioner John D. Doak said on Monday that he is eager to see the United States Supreme Court tackle the constitutionality of sweeping federal health care reforms and he expects to see the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act struck down next year by the nation’s highest court.
As widely anticipated, the Supreme Court agreed earlier Monday to decide the fate of PPACA by hearing appeals of a circuit court decision rendered in Florida in a case brought by 26 states opposing the act. While other circuit courts of upheld the law, the court in Florida found PPACA’s “individual mandate” – the requirement that nearly all Americans buy health insurance – to be unconstitutional, calling the new, broad power granted to government by the health care law “breathtaking in its expansive scope.”
Oral arguments will likely be heard by the Supreme Court in late February or March, with a decision expected by the end of June.
“I’m confident the court will find the law unconstitutional,” Doak said, “and that will be a national course-correction none too soon in coming.”
Virginia and Oklahoma have filed separate lawsuits, with Oklahoma’s case also focusing on the unconstitutionality of the individual mandate.
“Without the individual mandate in place to fund other government health programs through coerced insurance premiums, the PPACA house of cards collapses,” said Doak on Monday. “Health and Human Services already admitted the health care law’s CLASS program for long-term care insurance was unsustainable without forced participation, and scrapped the entire program.
“From the outset these health care reforms have been ill-conceived and impossibly broad in scope. America needs workable solutions to its health care crisis. Creating disincentives for maintaining employer-provided insurance, adding millions of Americans to federal health programs and forcing choices on American families was never a constitutional or workable solution.”
Doak noted that the case raises recusal questions for new Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan, who prior to being appointed to the high court worked for President Barack Obama’s administration while PPACA was being written and might have helped the administration craft the law’s legal defense once it was challenged. During her confirmation hearings Kagan was questioned by Republicans on the matter. The future justice said she attended a meeting where the lawsuits against PPACA were discussed by the administration, but maintains she was not involved in the government’s filings in defense of the law.
More recently, the Department of Justice refused to comply with a request from the House Judiciary Committee to provide documents and witness interviews that committee chairman Lamar Smith (R-Texas) believes would help his panel “properly understand any involvement by Justice Kagan in matters relating to health care legislation or litigation while she was Solicitor General.”
“There are serious questions about Justice Kagan’s impartiality, concerns that can’t be summarily dismissed,” Doak said. “The American people deserve answers, and a Supreme Court that will handle the case impartially, not deal from a stacked deck.”
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About the Oklahoma Insurance Department
The Oklahoma Insurance Department, an agency of the State of Oklahoma, is responsible for the education and protection of the insurance-buying public and for oversight of the insurance industry in the state.
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For more information contact:
Glenn Craven
(405) 522-1769
e-mail: glenn.craven@oid.ok.gov