Challenges to Obamacare have been to the U.S. Supreme Court twice already, winning once and losing once, and several other cases are moving that direction, one claiming the law is unconstitutional since it was a tax bill that started in the U.S. Senate and another that it is illegal because President Obama has made virtually dozens of arbitrary changes to the law without the consent of Congress.
Should Obamacare survive those claims, a new petition is being submitted to the U.S. Supreme Court asking for a review alleging the law violates the Fourth, Fifth and Ninth amendment provisions on privacy.
The complaint also cites Articles I, II and III of the Constitution regarding the separation of powers and focuses on two issues: the requirement to buy insurance and the control that will be vested in the Individual Price Advisory Board, a new creation of the federal law that is unanswerable to Congress and unaccountable to the federal courts.
Obamacare "introduces sweeping intrusions into the personal lives of Americans," the petition explains. "The Act's linchpin is the 'individual mandate,' which forces virtually every American to purchase government-approved health insurance or pay a penalty for refusing to do so."
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It argues that "to purchase a health insurance plan, a person must disclose medical and other personal information to various third parties, including the insurance company issuing the policy."
"Once the person relinquishes that information to the insurance company, it is subject to seizure by the government without a warrant under the voluntary relinquishment to private third parties doctrine, and a host of federal and state laws," the petition says.
"Accordingly, data forfeited to obtain insurance is subject to broad and irremediable government appropriation, and the threat of further dissemination is increased by the many well-publicized incidents of security breaches involving the ACA's insurance hub, healthcare.gov."
The case, brought by the Goldwater Institute, is on behalf of Nick Coons, a small business owner in Arizona, and Dr. Eric Novack.
Coons "would prefer not to buy a compliant insurance plan, and would not disclose his personal information and medical history to a private insurance corporation and other third parties. However, the individual mandate and tax penalty restrict Mr. Coons' freedom of choice by forcing him either to give up his personal privacy or pay a tax penalty to the government to preserve this right," the petition explains.
Meanwhile, Novack will be subject to the whims of the IPAB, an "executive branch agency of up to 15 members appointed by the president" with the power "to take any act it deems 'related to the Medicare program.'"
That includes reimbursement rates for doctors.
The board, given "virtually unlimited power over both public and private health care in America," would make "recommendations" that automatically would become law without approval in Congress or the signature of a president, the lawsuit explains.
And those decisions specifically are set above "judicial review."
"Remarkably, the ACA attempts to prohibit Congress from ever eliminating IPAB," the brief explains.
The law allows for a period of a few weeks in 2017 in which a resolution to repeal could be attempted. If passed, it would not go into effect until 2020.
"If Congress fails to repeal IPAB during this short period, it forever loses the ability to replace IPAB proposals," the complaint says.
About 12.5 percent of Novack's patients in his orthopedic surgical practice are Medicare patients, so the ACA "fundamentally transforms the manner by which Dr. Novack is reimbursed."
In challenging both the individual mandate and IPAB, the plaintiffs cite constitutional protections.
"Our government is designed to check and balance itself – if one branch overreaches, another branch is there to correct it. Ultimately, we want the court to strike down IPAB," said Darcy Olsen, president and CEO of the Goldwater Institute, the only organization in the country that has filed a legal challenge against the board.
The institute noted Rep. Phil Roe, R-Tenn., has introduced legislation in the House of Representatives to repeal the Independent Payment Advisory Board, and his effort has received dozens of co-sponsors, including several Democrats.
WND reported only days ago a recent federal court hearing in Washington focused on a lawsuit that charges Obama unilaterally altered the law without approval from Congress, so it's no longer legal.
David Yerushalmi, senior counsel for the American Freedom Law Center, said, "In order to keep his broken promises and clean up the political mess he made, President Obama disregarded his constitutional duty to obey the law of the land and flipped Obamacare upside down without congressional approval."
AFLC co-founder Robert Muise said the "lawlessness of this administration is breathtaking and dangerous."
"And the American people are sick and tired of this president's blatant disregard for the Constitution, so we, as private citizens, are doing something about it," he said.
Their lawsuit challenging the use of executive orders to change a federal law alleges Obama violated his constitutional duty to "faithfully execute" the law as passed by Congress in 2010.
It contends Obama violated the Constitution's separation of powers, which is designed to protect private individuals from the tyranny of government, and in particular, from the tyranny of a "single branch of government that seeks to usurp power and authority not permitted under the Constitution."
Problems arose with Obamacare almost as soon as it was adopted. For example, in 2013, "millions of Americans received notices that their health insurance was canceled, a result that was predictable in light of the various mandates imposed by Obamacare," AFLC said.
"This caused a political firestorm for the White House because Obama had promised the American people that if 'you like your health care plan, you can keep it' – a promise that was declared the 'lie of the year' by the Pulitzer Prize winning PolitiFact.com."
So Obama "engaged in a series of executive actions that materially altered Obamacare without congressional approval," the legal team explained.
Another case filed by a Florida company against Obamacare in 2013 charged Obama had no authority to simply change the law once it had been approved by Congress and signed.
The case was brought in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida by Boca Raton-based employer Kawa Orthodontics LLP. It argues that the delay of the employer mandate "exceeded [the Obama administration's] statutory authority, is arbitrary, capricious, and contrary to law, and is otherwise unlawful."
The complaint alleges a decision by Obama to delay the employer mandate violates the Administrative Procedure Act, which forbids "agency action" that exceeds an agency's statutory authority, is arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of discretion or otherwise not in accordance with the law. The complaint asks the court to enter a judgment declaring the delay to be unlawful and an injunction to stop it immediately.
"We obviously object to the employer mandate and the entire Obamacare law, but we understand that, under the U.S. Constitution, the law can only be changed by legislation passed by Congress and signed by the president," said Tom Fitton, president of Judicial Watch, which brought the case. "But politics do not trump the Constitution or the rule of law."
WND also reported this fall Eric Baxter, senior counsel for the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, is part of a team battling the Obamacare requirement that employers pay for birth control, including abortion-causing drugs.
This time a federal judge in Florida has ruled that the government's latest revisions to the mandate still "don't do enough to protect people of faith."
The ruling came from Judge James Moody Jr. in a suit by Ave Maria University, which charged the Obamacare requirement violates the faith on which it operates.
The university was facing millions of dollars in fines, but won an injunction "protecting its right to stay true to its beliefs," Becket said.
It was the first order preventing the government from enforcing its demands against religious organizations since it tried to solve the dispute in August with an "augmented rule."
The judge explained the university wanted a preliminary injunction until the case is resolved.
In its first trip to the Supreme Court, Obamacare was ruled constitutional but only after the justices had to rewrite the law and make the "penalties" a "tax," which the Obama administration actually had argued against.
In its second trip, the justices ruled that a "closely held" for-profit business can opt out of Obamacare's universal contraception requirement based on religious objections.
A number of other cases challenge Obamacare on additional allegations of unconstitutionality.
In one, attorneys for Matt Sissel – a small-business owner who wants to pay medical expenses on his own and has financial, philosophical and constitutional objections to being ordered to purchase a health plan he does not need or want – charge the Obamacare bill was unconstitutionally launched in the U.S. Senate and is therefore invalid.
They noted that the Constitution requires all tax bills in Congress to begin in the House of Representatives. Senate Majority Leader Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., they said, manipulated the legislation by taking the bill number for an innocuous veterans housing program that had been approved by the House, pasting it on the front of thousands of Obamacare pages and voting on it.
That means, they argued, that the entire law was adopted unconstitutionally and should be canceled, including its $800 billion in taxes.