Doctors’ group files suit against Kathleen Sebelius over healthcare reform

  We can now add the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS) to the growing list of people lining up to challenge the constitutionality of the healthcare reform bill. The AAPS has now filed suit against  Kathleen Sebelius and Social Security Administration Commissioner Michael Astrue on the grounds that the healthcare reform law violates Article 1 of  the constitution as well as the 5th and 10th amendments.

  Here is a list of what the AAPS hopes to accomplish:

— overturn the mandate for everyone to purchase health insurance “as outside the authority of Congress to enact and the federal government to enforce”;
— to declare the federal government’s imposition of standards for qualifying plans as impermissible;
— to declare the bill “unenforceable in its entirety” because it “cannot because funded without the insurance mandates”;
— and to order that Sebelius and Astrue “submit an accounting on the solvency of Medicare and Social Security,”

  While others have filed lawsuits challenging the healthcare reform bill based on Article 1 of the constitution and on the 10th amendment, this is the first lawsuit brought forth on the 5th amendment. The 5th amendment states “nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.”

  The theory in challenging the 5th amendment is stated here:

AAPS legal counsel Lawrence J. Joseph, who submitted the complaint, explained that when the Secretary of Health and Human Services sets criteria that private insurers must meet, she is “spreading costs to private parties” by driving up the cost of premiums. The additional money that customers must pay, Joseph says, “represents a regulatory taking, without just compensation, in violation of the Fifth Amendment.”

  An interesting argument, but not one that I am sure will hold water in the Supreme Court. None the less, the attempt must be made as this is our last chace to stop the healthcare reform legislation. We may not be able to stop all of it now, but whatever can be stopped must be stopped.

  The fight to stop the legislation may be over but the fight in the courts is just beginning. The left may be dismissing these lawsuits as trivial but the Supreme Court just may have something to say about that before all is said and done.