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Health blogs Obama administration hits speed dial on Florida health reform appeal You’re in luck: Still time to sign up for the Shamrock 10-miler, 5K and L’il Leprechaun Run Life Changes Obstetrics & Gynecology
In the nick of time, the Obama administration met a federal judge's appeal deadline Wednesday, ensuring that the health reform law will continue to roll out as Florida's legal victory is challenged.
The Justice Department ignored pleas that it fast-track its appeal directly to the U.S. Supreme Court, instead filing an appeal and request for speedy hearing with the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta.
A hearing could come as early as midsummer, soon after two other federal appeals are scheduled. But final resolution, before the U.S. Supreme Court, will likely not happen before 2012.
The Justice Department waited until the last possible minute to file its appeal paperwork.
With one-sixth of the nation's economy and the health care of its citizens in the balance, it was yet another dramatic turn of events in a high-stakes legal cliffhanger.
On Jan. 31, U.S. District Judge Roger Vinson found the health overhaul unconstitutional, saying the U.S. Commerce Clause did not allow the federal government to require every citizen to buy insurance or pay a penalty. Doing so would give the federal government such sweeping powers that it could force its citizens to eat broccoli, he contended.
Vinson, who is based in Pensacola, declared the entire health act invalid. The next day, Gov. Rick Scott triumphantly announced that ObamaCare was no longer the law of the land in Florida.
But the plot thickened. Asked by the Justice Department to clarify his ruling, Vinson last week acknowledged that other federal judges disagreed with his interpretation. Given the controversy, he said he would put a stay on his ruling while the appeals proceed - meaning the health act could continue to be implemented - on one condition: The White House had to file its appeal within a week, either to the appeals court or, Vinson urged, directly to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Conservative pundits including Fox News' Greta Van Susteren said Vinson had handed the Obama administration a "big win."
Van Susteren wrote on her blog, GretaWire: "You know the feds want to delay this matter since the longer they delay it getting resolved in the Supreme Court, the harder it is to reverse the health care law."
With a stay of Vinson's order in place, it might seem the Affordable Care Act should be in full force again in Florida. That's how other states have interpreted the order.
But that's not what's happening.
The Affordable Care Act includes new insurance industry regulations that states' insurance commissioners are charged with enforcing.
One new rule says insurance companies cannot impose a yearly dollar limit on benefits - so that people with cancer, for example, won't have chemotherapy stopped mid-treatment. Another says lifetime benefit caps are illegal except in some grandfathered policies, meaning sick people can't hit a brick wall in their coverage.
Still another Affordable Care Act insurance rule says that insurers must spend 80 percent to 85 percent of their customers' premium dollars on actual medical care as opposed to dividends, executive salaries or marketing.
Florida's Office of Insurance Regulation said it will not enforce any of those new rules - unless the legislature tells it to do so. It's an issue of states' rights, said Jack McDermott, spokesman for the agency.
"There is nothing in Florida law to require enforcement of the Affordable Care Act," he said. "The legislature would need to pass enabling legislation. At this point, it doesn't appear that's very likely."
Quite the opposite.
On Wednesday, the second day of the legislative session, the Senate approved a proposed constitutional amendment allowing Florida to opt out of the federal health care law, Senate President Mike Haridopolos' top priority.
The Senate approved the measure (SJR 2) by a 29-10 vote, with just one Democrat - Bill Montford of Tallahassee - voting in favor.
The amendment, which would go before voters next year, bans the federal government from forcing Floridians to buy health care coverage.
"This is not a unitary government where everything just comes on down high," Haridopolos, R-Merritt Island, said before the vote. "This is about freedom and respecting the U.S. Constitution and mostly, respecting individual rights."
Ian Millhiser, a policy analyst with the left-leaning Center for American Progress in Washington, cautioned that some Florida legislators were adopting a fringe "nullification" ideology that says any federal law made "not in pursuance of the Constitution" was void.
"This fringe theory has been soundly rejected throughout American history," Millhiser said. "Allowing nullification would 'speedily put an end to the union itself' because it would make each state's participation in the union entirely optional."
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