Holder Op-Ed: Health Care Challenges Are ‘Troubling’ and Wrong on the Law
Legal attacks on the insurance mandate in the new health care law are “troubling” and could have devastating consequences if they succeed, according to an op-ed by Attorney General Eric Holder and Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius.
Writing in the Washington Post, Holder and Sebelius say they are confident the law will be upheld on appeal. But they warn about problems ahead if they are wrong. “These attacks are wrong on the law, and if allowed to succeed, they would have devastating consequences for everyone with health insurance,” they write.
Requiring everyone to carry health insurance if they can afford it takes the burden off of people presently insured, whose premiums help cover health care for the uninsured, they say. And the law’s requirement that insurers cover those with pre-existing conditions wouldn’t work if people are allowed to wait to buy insurance until they are sick.
“The legal arguments made against the law gloss over this problem even as opponents have sought to invent new constitutional theories and dig up old ones that were rejected 80 years ago,” they write.
Passing along the cost of uncompensated care “harms the marketplace,” they says. “For decades, Supreme Court decisions have made clear that the Constitution allows Congress to adopt rules to deal with such harmful economic effects, which is what the law does—it regulates how we pay for health care by ensuring that those who have insurance don’t continue to pay for those who don’t.”
The op-ed appears one day after a federal judge in Virginia struck down the law, saying Congress did not have the authority to compel individuals to buy insurance on the private market.
