Ashamed VA is part of this...

Cuccinelli, figures, that guy makes me sick.


(CNN) - Officials from 14 states have gone to court to block the historic overhaul of the U.S. health care system that President Barack Obama signed into law Tuesday, arguing that the legislation's requirement that individuals buy health insurance violates the Constitution.

Thirteen of those officials filed suit in a federal court in Pensacola, Florida, minutes after Obama signed the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. The complaint calls the act an "unprecedented encroachment on the sovereignty of the states" and asks a judge to block its enforcement.

"The Constitution nowhere authorizes the United States to mandate, either directly or under threat of penalty, that all citizens and legal residents have qualifying health care coverage," the lawsuit states.

The case was filed by Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum and joined by 11 other Republican attorneys general, along with one Democrat. McCollum said the new law also forces states "to do things that are practically impossible to do as a practical matter, and forcing us to do it without giving any resources or money to do it."

McCollum's lawsuit was joined by his counterparts in South Carolina, Nebraska, Texas, Utah, Louisiana, Alabama, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Colorado, Idaho, South Dakota and Washington. Virginia's attorney general, Ken Cuccinelli, filed a separate case in his state Tuesday afternoon.

All but one of those state officials, Louisiana's Buddy Caldwell, are Republicans. But McCollum said the case is "not a partisan issue," and predicted other Democrats would join the suit.

"It's a question for most of us in the states of the costs to our people and to the rights and the freedoms of the individual citizens in upholding our constitutional duties as attorneys general," he said.

White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said Monday that lawyers have advised the administration that "we'll win these lawsuits." And Renee Landers, a law professor at Suffolk University in Massachusetts, said the Constitution gives Congress broad power to regulate commerce and promote the general welfare of Americans.

"If the federal courts follow existing precedents of the United States Supreme Court, I don't think that the claims will be successful," Landers told CNN.

Ryan Wiggins, a spokesman for McCollum, said the case was filed in Pensacola because "we were told that out of all of the places to file in Florida, Pensacola would move the quickest on it."

At least one of the officials who signed onto the lawsuit has run into criticism back home. Washington Gov. Chris Gregoire, a Democrat, criticized Republican Attorney General Rob McKenna for joining the case and said she would actively oppose the suit.

Separately, legislatures in three dozen states are considering proposed legislation aimed at blocking elements of the health care bill. But Cal Jillson, a political science professor at Southern Methodist University in Texas, said the Constitution says laws passed by Congress trump state laws.

"We've got a very conservative Supreme Court, but they're not about to overturn 200 years of Constitutional history and interpretation and declare that the supremacy clause is no longer in effect," Jillson said.

CNN Political Ticker: All politics, all the time Blog Archive - States sue to block health care bill - Blogs from CNN.com

I thought this one was interesting since the guy is from VA, this BS lawsuit will cost the state a ton of money, is anyone else pissed about this?


(CNN) -- A state attorney general is almost by definition a candidate for higher office. The filing of lawsuits challenging the health reform law by 14 attorneys general -- all but one of them Republican -- may look good for their next campaigns, but these cases are going nowhere legally.

The case filed by Florida and 12 other states challenges obligations allegedly imposed on the states by the statute as well as the individual insurance purchase mandate imposed by the law. The Virginia case challenges only the individual mandate, setting up against it a new Virginia law purporting to nullify it.

One of the states' claims is based on a simple misreading of the health reform law.

The lawsuit claims that it compels the states to enforce the federal law or to operate exchanges that would make health insurance available to consumers. Section 1321 gives states the choice of doing so or not, and if states elect not to do so, the federal government will enforce the law and operate the exchange in the state.

No state has to do anything, except make its choice known to the federal government. Moreover, section 1333 of the act allows states to apply for a waiver to take a completely different approach to covering their residents if they have a better idea.

The complaint also attacks the provisions of the law that provide Medicaid coverage for all Americans whose income is under 133 percent of the poverty level. These Medicaid expansions are not effective until 2014, and the federal government pays the entire cost until 2017, after which the state's share gradually increases to 10 percent by 2020.

It is hard to understand how the states are harmed in any way by the billions of dollars the Medicaid expansions will pour into their states to cover millions of their residents, many of whom would otherwise be treated by providers without compensation. But in any event, states can simply opt out of Medicaid if they choose not to participate.

The Supreme Court has long upheld spending clause programs that require states that accept federal program funds to comply with federal program requirements, and this law simply follows those precedents.

The challenge to the individual insurance mandate is simply not legally credible. First, it is not clear whether the federal courts even have jurisdiction to hear the claim. Under Article III of the Constitution, courts may not decide hypothetical questions but rather only actual cases and controversies. The states are in no way injured by the mandate that individuals purchase health insurance, and thus should not be able to challenge it.

But the mandate is clearly constitutional. The mandate requires people who have household incomes above the tax filing limit ($18,700 for joint filers) and who are not covered by their employer or a public program to buy health insurance.

Those who earn less than 400 percent of the poverty level will get tax credits to help pay for it. People who are subject to the mandate but choose to remain uninsured will have to pay a tax, which will increase with their income up to the cost of a high-deductible insurance policy.

Under the reform legislation, insurers must take all applicants regardless of pre-existing conditions. The insurance market can only function if healthy people buy insurance, helping to share the cost burden with those who get sick. We cannot simply let people wait until they are sick to purchase it.

But more fundamentally, people who can afford insurance and don't buy it are simply being irresponsible. An auto accident or serious disease can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. Why should the taxpayers or health care providers have to finance the care of those who refuse to buy insurance?

The Constitution gives Congress the power to regulate commerce among the states.

The Supreme Court has long held that this authority reaches all economic activity. The court has recognized as legitimate exercises of the Commerce Power the authority of Congress to prohibit the growing of a few marijuana plants on a window sill for personal medical use or to outlaw a doctor's performing of a partial-birth abortion.

Choosing whether to buy insurance or impose your health care costs on others is economic activity subject to that authority.

Virginia has passed a law purporting to nullify the federal law. But the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution provides that federal law is the supreme law of the land. Virginia's law is no more enforceable than were its laws attempting to nullify federal desegregation laws in the 1950s.

I am from Virginia. Like most states, we are in terrible shape financially, lacking money for schools, roads or health care. We cannot afford bankrolling frivolous lawsuits.

Health bill lawsuits are going nowhere - CNN.com