Texas among states winning case against Obamacare

Breitbart:
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is leading a five-state coalition that on Thursday won an $839 million judgment against the federal government in an Obamacare lawsuit, a massive blow to the Obama administration’s namesake legislation.
The Affordable Care Act (ACA, better known as Obamacare) requires medical providers to pay a Health Insurance Provider Fee (HIPF). Even though the ACA exempts states from paying that fee when providing health care, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) during the Obama era created a regulation requiring states to pay the fee anyway, a fee that is styled as a tax on the states.

Paxton sued in federal court, joined by Indiana, Nebraska, Kansas, and Louisiana. The five states’ lawsuit argues that this tax/fee is illegal under the Administrative Procedure Act (APA) because the ACA clearly exempts states from this payment and also that even if the statute did allow it, such taxes would violate the Tenth Amendment of the Constitution when imposed on sovereign states.

Judge Reed O’Connor of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas agreed on the statutory issue (the APA claim), striking down the Obama HHS rule because it violates the plain language of the ACA law. O’Connor ordered the federal government to pay Texas the $305 million that the Lone Star State had paid in HIPF fees, as well as the fees of the other states, for a total of $839 million.
...
The court found this aspect of Obamacare unconstitutional.  Since Trump's election conservatives have been chipping away at the law and would have repealed it had not John McCain go back on his word and voted to save it.  For reasons that remain unclear recent polls show the law is finally popular with a majority of those surveyed.  I find that incredible.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Should Republicans go ahead and add Supreme Court Justices to head off Democrats

Washington Post: Some Democrats eye adding more justices to the Supreme Court to change its ideological bent The once-remote idea has gained the attention of liberals angered by the GOP push to remake the federal courts. Probably the easy way to defeat this court-packing scheme is for Trump to propose doing the same thing now.  It would lead to Democrat denunciations and claims that it would be wrong, thereby blowing up any attempt by them in the unfortunate event of Democrats winning a presidential election.
Read more

29 % of companies say they are unlikely to keep insurance after Obamacare

Conn Carroll: A new survey of 368 midsize to large companies found that 29% of them are considering terminating their active employee health care plans when Obamacare is full implemented in 2014. Only 71% of employers surveyed said they did not expect to drop their health coverage, while 20% said they did not know and 9% said they were planning to exit. The latest survey, conducted by Towers Watson, echoes an ealier survey by McKinsey & Co. finding that 30% of private-sector employers were planning to drop their employee health insurance coverage by 2014. When the Congressional Budget Office crunched Obamacare's spending numbers, they estimated that only 7% of employees currently covered by employer-sponsored plans would lose their plans. ... This means the cost of the health care fiasco will be hundreds of billions more than estimated by the CBO and Congressional Democrat. It is also clear that Obama's pledge that you could keep your health care plan if you wanted t
Read more

Bin Laden's concern about Zarqawi's remains

James Robbins: ... Bin Laden suggests that President Bush should allow Zarqawi’s body to be returned to his family in Jordan, but this is a matter that is up to the Jordanian government, which so far has not shown much interest in facilitating a homecoming. Bin Laden mocks King Abdullah II, calling him a Coalition minion, and asking “w hat scares you about Abu Musab after he’s dead? You know that his funeral, if allowed to happen, would be a huge funeral showing the extent of sympathy with the mujahedin.” A large crowd would definitely turn out, though most people would be on hand to demonstrate their anger and disgust. Last November’s hotel bombings in Amman , masterminded by Zarqawi, are still fresh in people’s memory, and mentioning them to Jordanians has the same visceral impact as memory of the 9/11 attacks does here. Jordan has adopted a zero-tolerance policy towards those who choose to mourn the country’s least favorite son, and four opposition members of parliament who paid con
Read more