Empowering patient voices through voter registration
While roughly 83% of adults in the United States will visit a health care provider in the next year, an estimated
News
2-3-11 Affordable Care Act Update
February 8, 2011
2/3/11 Below is this week’s update on the Affordable Care Act. As always, thank you for all you do every day to support laws and policies that help cancer patients and their families
Update on Legal Challenges to the Affordable Care Act
As I informed you on Monday, a federal judge in Florida ruled that the requirement in the Affordable Care Act that all Americans purchase health insurance is unconstitutional. Two federal judges have upheld the so-called “individual responsibility” or “individual mandate” provision of the law, and two judges have now found that the provision should be struck down. (Several other challenges to the law have been dismissed because the plaintiffs lacked legal standing.) The conflicting opinions increase the chances that the Supreme Court will ultimately decide if the law is constitutional. .Read the Associated Press story.
The Florida judge ruled that the whole law should be struck down if the individual responsibility provision is unconstitutional, going a step further than a December decision by a federal judge in Virginia that left open the question of whether the rest of the law could be implemented if one provision is invalidated. Both the Florida and Virginia judges, however, declined to issue an injunction as requested by the plaintiffs to prevent the law from taking effect. This is a very important development that enables the implementation of critical provisions of the law to continue across the country. Read or listen to the audio of Kaiser Health News’ Q&A with legal expert Stuart Taylor on the ruling.
Despite the absence of an injunction, some state officials have said the law cannot be further implemented in the wake of the Florida decision. Halting implementation would mean returning or declining federal grants that are helping states put provisions of the law into practice. In addition, the law enables the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to establish a federally run health benefit exchange in states that do not set one up of their own. The same was true of the new high-risk pool program – states that chose not to create their own program now offer the federal program, known as the Pre-existing Condition Health Insurance Plan (PCIP). Read The New York Times’ story and view the PBS News Hour coverage for more on what the ruling may mean for the states.
In another development stemming from the Florida decision, some state officials and members of Congress are urging the U.S. Supreme Court to review the question of the law’s constitutionality immediately, rather than waiting for federal appellate courts to hear the case and render their rulings. However, most legal experts believe the Supreme Court will wait for appeals court rulings before accepting it. As the cases reach the appellate level, the Society and ACS CAN will continue to defend provisions of the law that are improving access to adequate and affordable health coverage for people with cancer and their families – provisions that reflect priorities adopted by our organizations long before the current health care debate began. Read coverage from Politico or listen to the NPR analysis on how the Supreme Court may rule.
Last month, with the concurrence of the Society’s National Board of Directors, the Society and ACS CAN joined the American Diabetes Association and the American Heart Association to jointly file a friend-of-the-court brief in an appeal of a federal decision in Michigan that upheld the individual responsibility provision as constitutional. Our brief focuses very specifically on critical patient protections that would not be sustainable without the individual responsibility provision, including a ban on pre-existing condition exclusions, the elimination of annual and lifetime benefit limits, and a ban on insurance companies rescinding coverage when a policyholder gets sick.
Senate Votes on Health Care Repeal Bill
The Senate on Wednesday defeated an amendment offered by Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) to the Federal Aviation Administration re-authorization bill to repeal the Affordable Care Act. Senator McConnell and Senate Republicans had been petitioning Senator Reid to bring the House passed repeal bill, H.R. 2, to the Senate floor for a vote since the bill’s passage last month. Senators Reid and McConnell negotiated an agreement to allow an amendment to repeal the Affordable Care Act to be offered to the FAA re-authorization bill. A procedural vote that would have allowed Senators to vote on the amendment failed (47-51). Read the ACS CAN press release and a story from Politico.
An amendment offered by Debbie Stabenow (MI) was also offered to strike new IRS 1099 tax reporting rules for small businesses included in the Affordable Care Act. President Obama mentioned his support for dropping the 1099 reporting requirement in his State of the Union address last week. Senator Stabenow’s amendment passed (81-17) with bi-partisan support.
Medicaid Maintenance of Effort (MOE)
ACS CAN continues to work to protect Medicaid funding and state programs from budget cuts. ACS CAN is urging both state and federal legislators to maintain the Maintenance of Effort (MOE) provisions in the Affordable Care Act. The MOE ensures coverage protections for children and families and provides states with new federal dollars to help expand Medicaid. The elimination of the MOE provisions would make it harder for low-income or uninsured cancer patients to obtain or maintain access to Medicaid or CHIP, and would create barriers to access for important preventive care. Read The New York Times’ story “For Governors, Medicaid Looks Ripe for Slashing.”
Read the ACS CAN Maintenance of Efforts talking points:
Christopher W. Hansen
President
American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network (ACS CAN)