Court Ruling Marks Another Chapter for Health Care Debate

Senator Mike Johanns

I find it remarkable that, as I write to you in this space for the last time this year, we find ourselves where we started in January. We began 2010 in the center of the health care debate, with the bill dividing and polarizing our country. Eleven months ago I wrote that President Obama should keep his promise of holding the health care debate in the open. Instead, the closed-doors negotiations produced a law full of backdoor deals and kickbacks. Today we are faced with a fresh but familiar debate over the health care law after a federal judge ruled a key part of it unconstitutional. The constitutionality of the health care law has long been in question. Last December, I supported a Point of Order in the Senate which would have declared that Congress lacked the authority to enact the bill into law. Though it failed, it helped pave the way for legal challenges to a law that stretches Congressional authority beyond its constitutional limits. Since then, more than 20 states across the country have filed a lawsuit with the U.S. Department of Justice disputing whether Congress has a right to compel Americans to buy government-approved health insurance. Proponents of the law assert the expansive requirements fall under Congress' constitutional right to regulate interstate commerce. On December 13, a judge in the Eastern District of Virginia outlined in a 42-page ruling that the individual mandate "exceeds the constitutional boundaries of congressional power … At its core, this dispute is not simply about regulating the business of insurance—or crafting a scheme of universal health insurance coverage—it's about an individual's right to choose to participate." This ruling will likely go through an extensive appeals process. It is very likely that this case, or another similar to it, will eventually reach the Supreme Court. In the meantime, I support a full repeal of the law and co-sponsored a bill to repeal the individual mandate now being challenged in court. As long as President Obama is in office, this will remain very difficult, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't try. Studies have shown the health care law will gut Medicare provider payments, increase our overall health care expenditures and increase individual insurance premiums. Many businessmen and women have written and spoken to me about the negative impact the law will have on their companies. One business owner bluntly but honestly stated the law's requirements "will far exceed our profit margin" and listed her bleak options as "a massive lay off, placing most employees on part-time status, rescinding all other benefits, or going out of business entirely." Two other district courts have upheld the law's constitutionality, but many more have yet to weigh in. I support the Virginia decision and believe the issue of whether this law is an unconstitutional abuse of Congressional power must be decided by the highest court in the land. It is my hope the Supreme Court will agree, and that in another year I can write to you with the positive news that the American people and American businesses have been spared the anxiety and hardship of the health care law.