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Justice Dept. says Supreme Court couldn't strike insurance mandate alone
The Justice Department argued this week that if the Supreme Court strikes down the healthcare law’s individual mandate, it also has to ax two popular provisions of the law.
Courts have reached differing conclusions on the question of “severability” — whether finding the mandate unconstitutional requires striking down the rest of the law. The lower court in the case now before the Supreme Court said the mandate could be struck down on its own, without affecting other parts of the healthcare law.
But the Justice Department said in a Supreme Court brief this week that two other provisions have to be struck down if the high court finds the mandate unconstitutional. The court would also have invalidate policies that require insurers cover people with pre-existing conditions and prohibit them from charging those people higher premiums, the brief says.
Without the mandate, Justice said, those policies “would not advance Congress’s efforts to make affordable coverage widely available.”
The Justice Department addressed severability in its reply to the appeal filed by 26 states and the National Federation of Independent Business. Both sides have asked the high court to take that case as soon as possible. But the government said the justices only should review some of the issues the states raised.
It urged the justices not to reopen questions about whether the healthcare law’s Medicaid expansion is unconstitutional. The states have raised that charge, but no court has ruled in their favor. The Justice Department also said the Supreme Court should not hear arguments that the law’s employer mandate is unconstitutional. That argument has also failed in every lower court.
