Posted on 12/04/2014 9:45:18 AM PST by Cincinatus' Wife
Members of the GOP are asking the Supreme Court to take up another case against ObamaCare, this time challenging a controversial medical board that the party has called “a death panel.”
Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.), Rep. Phil Roe (R-Tenn.) and several other Republicans will file an amicus brief Thursday urging the court to reconsider a case against a piece of the healthcare law called the Independent Payment Advisory Board.
“Because the law frees [the board] of any checks and balances, waiting could be dangerous. The Supreme Court should hold that the time to answer these constitutional questions is now, not later,” Coburn and Roe, who are both doctors, wrote in a Wall Street Journal op-ed late Wednesday.
They criticized the board, which would be comprised of 16 medical experts picked by the president, for its ability to write rules to cut Medicare spending that become law unless Congress votes to strike them down.
“There is nothing ‘advisory’ about its vast powers,” they wrote. “The law gives this board sweeping authority to do so, with virtually no constraints.”
The case, Coons v. Lew, argues that the medical advisory board oversteps the bounds of separation of powers. The lawsuit was previously dismissed by an appeals court.
Coburn and Poe argue that the Affordable Care Act protects the medical board from constraints of the law, “achieving an unprecedented trifecta of bureaucratic rule: an administrative agency whose actions cannot be checked by the executive, legislative or judicial branches.”
The panel of experts, which was memorably called a “death panel” by 2008 vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin and also described as “healthcare rationing” by Democrats, does not yet have members and has drafted no policy.
But it has again entered the spotlight as the GOP plot ways to take down the law as they regain control of the Senate next month.
Is the GOP simply trying to pass the buck of ridding us of this fiasco?
The USSC made it clear in their initial ruling that the remedy for this, in their mind, was legislative and not judicial.
What the GOP should do is tell the court to either take the case and rule on the side of the GOP or that the GOP congress will impeach any justice that votes to keep the law as it is. That should motivate a couple justices.
And no doubt this president would have Ezekiel Emanuel be the chairman. Ole "Dr. Death" would have free reign.
Once again the GOP RINOs are basing their argument against Obamacare Democratcare on a minor issue, imo, concerning Democratcare; they’re giving us a dog & pony show.
More specifically, RINOs continue to wrongly ignore that the Supreme Court had historically clarified that the states have never delegated the feds, expressly via the Constitution, the specific power to regulate, tax and spend for intrastate healthcare purposes.
”State inspection laws, health laws, and laws for regulating the internal commerce of a State, and those which respect turnpike roads, ferries, &c. are not within the power granted to Congress. [emphases added]” —Gibbons v. Ogden, 1824.
Patriots need to bear in mind that the 10th Amendment is probably one of the best-kept secrets in DC.
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