Pennsylvania House bill targets health coverage requirement
The Republican-sponsored bill passed the House Health Committee on a party line vote, 14-9.
Democrats criticized the bill as a violation of the U.S. Constitution that will do nothing to help more people afford health insurance, but committee Chairman Matt Baker, R-Tioga, said the bill, if it becomes law, will give Pennsylvania more legal avenues to challenge the federal law in court.
"It gets singularly to the mandate issue of forcing people to buy insurance that they may not want, they may not need and they don't even have a choice," Baker told reporters after the vote.
The legal impact of any state measure is questionable, since courts generally have held that federal laws trump those in states. And while Baker said the state arguably could enforce such a law, he also acknowledged that the matter is likely to be settled by the U.S. Supreme Court before the insurance requirement in the federal law takes effect in three years.
The federal law was passed by a Democratic-controlled Congress and was signed by President Barack Obama last March. Spokesmen for Republican majority leaders in the state House and Senate said Monday they could not predict whether or when the bill will reach a floor vote, although Baker said House Majority Leader Mike Turzai, R-Allegheny, had encouraged him to move it out of his committee. A separate bill in the Senate also would seek to block the requirement through a constitutional amendment, although it remains in committee.
Pennsylvania already is party to a states' lawsuit that challenges the federal insurance requirement.
The law's core requirement is that Americans carry health insurance except in cases of financial hardship. Starting in 2014, those who cannot show they are covered by an employer, government program or their own policy would face fines by the Internal Revenue Service.
Defenders of the law say a system of health insurance doesn't work if people are allowed to avoid paying for it until they need medical attention because premiums collected from the healthy pay the cost of care for the sick.
A number of states are taking up challenges. The one advanced by Baker is based on a model version written by the American Legislative Exchange Council, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit group that promotes limited government.
Six states—Virginia, Idaho, Arizona, Georgia, Missouri and Louisiana—already have enacted laws similar to the one Baker advocates, according to the council's tally, while Oklahoma and Arizona each have enacted constitutional amendments.
The Health Committee did not hold a hearing on the bill, which Baker entitled the "Freedom of Choice in Health Care Act," and Republicans rejected a Democratic effort to table the bill in favor of holding hearings on it.
Democrats attacked Republicans for not using the first Health Committee meeting of 2011 to look for ways to extend adultBasic, the state's low-cost health insurance for working adults, which is running out of money for its 42,000 enrollees at the end of February.
"Could you please tell me how you explain to your constituents that, right out of the box, the first thing that we push is House Bill 42 and not worry about insuring those Pennsylvanians who will be losing their health care as of March 1?" Rep. Vanessa Lowery Brown, D-Philadelphia, asked Baker during the hearing.
Baker said he was sympathetic to Brown's concerns.
"However, this is about a mandate, it's not about the debate concerning adultBasic or any other venue of health insurance," Baker responded.
Before being elected Pennsylvania governor in November, then-Attorney Tom Corbett, a Republican, hauled the state into the fray against the federal insurance requirement by joining a states' lawsuit in a Florida federal court. The judge last week agreed with the challenge, and the U.S. Department of Justice said it would appeal.
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