Democratic Leaders Challenge Obama Medicaid Policy in Supreme Court

Democratic Leaders Challenge Obama Medicaid Policy in Supreme Court

Unhappy with the White House’s legal position, Democratic leaders of Congress have filed a brief with the U.S. Supreme Court challenging President Barack Obama’s position on Medicaid.

The dispute stems from Douglas v. Independent Living Center of Southern California, in which the plaintiffs (Medicaid beneficiaries and providers) sued over California’s decision to cut what was already the nation’s lowest payment rates under the government-funded health program.

The Obama administration has taken the position that beneficiaries and health care providers can’t sue state officials to challenge the state’s 10% cuts in Medicaid provider payments, even if the cuts compromise access to care for the poor.

Democratic leaders disagree, saying Medicaid beneficiaries must be allowed to file suit. Those who signed the Supreme Court brief include Representatives Henry Waxman and Nancy Pelosi of California, and Senators Harry Reid of Nevada and Max Baucus of Montana.

http://www.allgov.com/Top_Stories/ViewNews/Democratic_Leaders_Challenge_Obama_Medicaid_Policy_in_Supreme_Court_110810

issue but a constitutional issue about the ability to sue state officials...what r u talking about?

President Obama's Affordable Care Act relies heavily on the expansion of Medicaid to cover low-income individuals who are uninsured. Yet at the same time, his administration is appealing to the Supreme Court,
under the supremacy clause, the federal government's right to critically underfund the Medicaid program to the extent that patients will have significant impairment of their access to health care.

As we have stated many times in these messages, a severely underfunded welfare program for low-income individuals that clearly impairs access violates our sense of equity and health care justice. Apparently President Obama does not share this view. Otherwise, as a constitutional lawyer, whywould he allow the Justice Department to take to the Supreme Court a case that would permit his administration to violate the law that says that Medicaid rates must be sufficient to enlist enough providers so that Medicaid beneficiaries have access to care to the same extent as the general population?

Where does this lead? Yesterday, in the context of reducing the deficit, he said that the country needs "modest adjustments to health care programs like Medicare." More cuts.

Try doing that in nations with universal social insurance programs. It will never happen. But in our fragmented system, there is an opening for battles based on demographic divides. The tax-cutting, government-shrinking young rebels are taking up the cause of putting greedy geezers in their place.

Having been raised in the 40s and 50s - a time when there was great hope of an egalitarian America - I have to ask myself that trite but timely question, what kind of a country have we become?