pending before the Supreme Court, argues that the government shouldn't
be able to force her to carry health insurance. Joined by three other
individuals and a small-business trade association, she's asking the
justices to rule that the law's insurance mandate is unconstitutional
and that the rest of the act should be thrown out with it. But new
revelations about her own situation make the case for the other side.
As The Times' David Savage reported, Brown and her husband have fallen
on hard times since filing the lawsuit, largely because their auto
repair business in Florida failed. The couple have filed for
bankruptcy protection, asking a federal court to wipe out close to
$60,000 in consumer debts. Significantly, their unpaid bills include
$2,750 owed to a local hospital and physicians group and $1,735 to
out-of-state medical specialists.
The disclosures are political gold for the Obama administration,
transforming Brown from a champion of individual liberty into an
exemplar of a problem the new law was designed to address. Uninsured
and underinsured Americans rack up about $60 billion in medical bills
every year that they cannot afford, forcing doctors and hospitals to
pass those costs on to federal taxpayers and those patients who can
pay their bills. It's not impinging on personal freedom to ask people
to cover their own medical tabs. The mechanism Congress created to do
that is the individual mandate.
The insurance mandate and premium subsidies in the healthcare law are
expected to significantly reduce the amount of uncompensated care and
cost shifting. The mandate also helps balance the law's insurance
reforms, which bar companies from denying coverage to people with
preexisting conditions and from making their policies prohibitively
expensive. To prevent people from signing up for coverage when they
need treatment, then dropping it when they're healthy, Congress
required all adult Americans to maintain health insurance coverage or
pay a tax penalty.
Brown and her allies contend that the law wouldn't work as Congress
intended if the mandate were removed, so the entire act must be
scrapped if the mandate is found unconstitutional. But her own
complaints about the cost illustrate the flaw in that reasoning. Much
of the law is aimed at slowing the growth of healthcare expenses and
improving the quality of care. Those provisions are still valuable
regardless of what happens to the mandate. Nor do the insurance
reforms fail if the mandate is eliminated. Lawmakers would simply have
to find another mechanism to discourage people who can afford
insurance from gaming the system. Republicans in Congress have
proposed several ways to do so, including financial penalties and
waiting periods for people who seek insurance only when they need
treatment.
Although Brown is wrong about the mandate, her concerns about cost are
valid. In their zeal to make sure insurance policies were
comprehensive, lawmakers didn't give people enough flexibility to save
money by insuring themselves against only the largest risks. Nor have
they done enough to rein in the escalating price of medical care. But
those are reasons to keep building on the 2010 law, not to repeal it.
For more information on these matters, please call our office at 305
548 5020, option 1
Twitter: www.twitter.com/yoelmolina_mo
Faceback page: www.facebook.com/lawofficeofyoelmolina
Linkedin profile: http://tinyurl.com/linkedinpagemo
Blog: http://tinyurl.com/molawblog
"Turn to us when you need help"
