Power

House GOP Sues Obama, Could Make Health Care Pricier for Low-Income Americans

The lawsuit claims the administration abused its authority in delaying the implementation of a key portion of the Affordable Care Act.

The lawsuit claims the administration abused its authority in delaying the implementation of a key portion of the Affordable Care Act. Shutterstock

The morning after President Obama announced he was taking executive action to reform immigration policy after years of Congressional inaction, House Republicans made good on months of threats and lawyer-shopping and sued the president, arguing he abused his office’s executive authority in taking some unilateral actions related to health insurance reform.

The lawsuit, filed in federal court in Washington, D.C., names the secretaries of the Health and Human Services and Treasury departments as defendants and accuses the administration of overstepping its constitutional authority concerning two important aspects of the Affordable Care Act.

First, House Republicans accuse the Obama administration in their complaint of unlawfully postponing until 2016 a requirement that larger employers offer health coverage to their full-time employees or pay penalties.

The second focus of the lawsuit is a provision in health insurance reform law known as cost-sharing reductions, which are designed to alleviate out-of-pocket medical costs for people with lower incomes. That provision authorizes the Obama administration to pay health insurance companies to reduce the cost of deductibles and co-pays for people whose incomes range from the poverty threshold to 2.5 times that threshold. That works out to $11,670 to $29,175 in annual income for an individual.

The payments to health insurance companies are unlawful because no funds for the subsidies have been appropriated by Congress, according to the Republicans’ complaint.

Should House Republicans succeed in their challenge to the cost-sharing reductions, low-income Americans would not directly lose access to health care, because the Affordable Care Act still requires insurance companies to provide coverage.

But without the subsidy, insurers would likely raise costs elsewhere, making that coverage more expensive for low-income families. This is similar to the right-wing legal strategy at work in the lawsuit currently before the U.S. Supreme Court challenging subsidies on the federal insurance exchanges.

The Constitution does not directly authorize the kind of lawsuit filed by House Speaker John Boehner and the GOP-dominated House of Representatives. Instead, a lawsuit must be approved via the legislative process, which House Republicans did in July.

According to the complaint, the legal authority for the lawsuit comes from that July 30th vote by the House of Representatives authorizing Boehner to do sue the administration.

The House vote in July only authorized the Speaker to sue the administration over alleged abuses of executive authority related to the Affordable Care Act, but according to reports, Boehner’s office said an additional vote for legal action related to Obama’s executive action on immigration is under consideration.

“Time after time, the president has chosen to ignore the will of the American people and rewrite federal law on his own without a vote of Congress,” Boehner said in a statement. “If this president can get away with making his own laws, future presidents will have the ability to as well. The House has an obligation to stand up for the Constitution, and that is exactly why we are pursuing this course of action.”

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) slammed the lawsuit as more political theater from the House GOP.

“The fact is, this lawsuit is a bald-faced attempt to achieve what Republicans have been unable to achieve through the political process,” Pelosi said in a statement. “The legislative branch cannot sue simply because they disagree with the way a law passed by a different Congress has been implemented.”

“While the American people want Congress to get serious about creating good-paying jobs and strengthening the middle class, House Republicans are paying $500-an-hour in taxpayer money to sue the President of the United States,” Pelosi said.

Republicans first threatened to sue the administration over its implementation of the ACA last summer but had difficulty finding lawyers to take their case. Two law firms withdrew from the case, and it wasn’t until this week that Republicans were able to secure representation by Georgetown Law Professor and political pundit Jonathan Turley.

The administration has at least 60 days to file a response to the lawsuit.