By Ethan Rome - Executive Director, Health Care for America Now

The Fourth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals in Richmond, Va., will hear arguments Tuesday on contradictory rulings by two Virginia federal judges on attempts to invalidate the new health care law's requirement that everyone who can afford private insurance must buy it.

The encouraging news for those of us who support the law, the Affordable Care Act (ACA), is that the results so far are good: of the 31 lawsuits challenging the ACA in federal courts, only two judges have ruled against part or all of the law. Most of the other cases have been dismissed or are still wending their way through the lower courts. Of the five judges who have ruled on the merits, three have upheld the law.

In one of the Virginia cases, U.S. District Judge Norman Moon ruled that the individual responsibility provision, also known as the individual mandate, is a proper exercise of congressional authority under the Commerce Clause of the Constitution.

Judge Moon is right: Congress clearly has the authority to regulate the health insurance market, including protecting consumers from insurance industry abuses and reducing costs for families, seniors and businesses. The best way to protect consumers and control costs is to make sure everyone has affordable health insurance, and that's what the ACA does.

As all the legal challenges wind through the courts, there have been several significant developments that provide important context for the litigation:

• Most states are proceeding at a good pace with implementation - including many of the 26 listed as plaintiffs in the Florida legal challenge now on appeal in the 11th Circuit. Virginia itself passed a law, signed by its Republican governor, declaring its intent to create a state exchange.

• The ACA is already making a huge difference in the lives of millions of Americans. For example, 600,000 young adults now have insurance thanks to the ACA requirement that they be allowed to enroll in their parents' workplace health plans. People now have zero co-pays for preventive services, children can no longer be rejected by insurers because of pre-existing conditions, and insurers must end lifetime limits on care. Seniors in the Medicare "donut hole" have discounts on prescription drugs, and 4 million of them received $250 checks last year. Small businesses are receiving job-creating tax credits for providing workplace coverage, and now more small businesses are offering coverage despite the slow economy.

• Contrary to their "repeal and replace" promise on the campaign trail, Republicans have failed to offer a replacement health care proposal of any kind. Instead they've obsessively worked to repeal and defund the ACA, a project that appears to have stalled out. Just last week GOP leaders threw up their hands and acknowledged the futility of their efforts.

• The Republicans spearheading the political and legal attacks on the law have demonstrated mind-blowing hypocrisy on the individual responsibility provision. While they've excoriated the mandate - and argued again and again that it violates the constitutional rights of every American - they've embraced a mandate in their Medicare privatization scheme, which the Republicans in the House voted for last month as part of their 2012 budget. The Republican plan ends Medicare as we know it and would devastate America's seniors and families. Ironically, it also requires that seniors buy private insurance in a way that's nearly identical to the insurance requirement in the ACA (although that's where the similarity to the ACA begins and ends).

The ACA lawsuits are part of a serious attack on the people who are benefiting from the law - millions of seniors, children, young people and families. The politicians who want to overturn the law can yammer on about the Constitution, but what they can't do is explain how taking away important protections and benefits is good for actual people.

We are confident the law will ultimately be upheld. The U.S. Supreme Court will have the final say, and it has corrected lower-court mistakes when the nation has enacted other historic laws like Social Security, the minimum wage law and the Voting Rights Act.

We also believe the American people will not allow the courts or the Congress to return us to the time when insurance companies could exclude people because of pre-existing conditions, drop people for getting sick, jack up rates when they please or let benefit caps force people with serious diseases into bankruptcy.

The two cases being heard Tuesday, just like the Florida challenge, are driven by partisan politics. The Republicans' obsessive efforts to repeal and defund the ACA reveal that this litigation is really about the Republican Party protecting health insurer profits at the expense of working and middle-class families - and about giving our health care back to the insurance companies.

By, Ethan Rome - Executive Director, Health Care for America Now

If the Republicans have their way and privatize Medicare, it will put millions of seniors at the mercy of health insurance companies and force them to pay $39 trillion more for Medicare coverage than they would under existing law, according to the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR). That's why this is a massive windfall for insurers. The GOP budget plan will also shift trillions of dollars in costs onto America's seniors and families. When the program begins, new Medicare enrollees would have to pay at least $6,400 more each year out-of-pocket for private coverage equivalent to current Medicare benefits. And the average Medicare beneficiary's contribution to the cost of Medicare benefits would skyrocket from 25 percent under the existing system to an astonishing 68 percent in 2030, according to CEPR and the Congressional Budget Office.

The Republican plan will enrich insurance companies at the expense of consumers and actually increase the overall net cost of health care by $34 trillion over the next 75 years, the planning period Medicare trustees are required to use. The increased costs are because of the private health insurance industry's excessive profits, obscene CEO salaries and the costs of the bureaucracy it creates to deny care to consumers. These private plan administrative costs often eat up 20 or even 30 cents of every insurance premium dollar compared to Medicare's roughly 3 cents. And in the past few weeks it's become clear that the industry's profits keep going up as consumers are being crushed by ever-rising co-payments and deductibles.

The sheer waste of Medicare privatization is truly staggering. According to an eye-opening report by CEPR's David Rosnick and Dean Baker, the Republican plan will ultimately force seniors to pay $39 trillion more for health care through 2084 than if Medicare were left alone. That's equal to a tax of about $110,000 for every man, woman and child in the country.

What we ought to do is increase our efforts to eliminate waste, fraud and abuse instead of impoverishing seniors, wasting massive amounts of taxpayer funds and giving the insurance companies control of seniors' health care. That's what the Affordable Care Act does, along with other Medicare reforms within President Obama's deficit reduction proposal.

The Republican plan, drawn by Budget Chairman Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, picks winners and losers in a big way. The winners are big corporations, like the insurance companies and their Washington lobbyists who spend millions to maintain a stranglehold on health care and the Republicans in Congress. The losers are America's working and middle-class families.

The Republicans also give massive tax breaks to millionaires and billionaires like the Koch brothers. To pay for this, they make savage cuts to Medicaid that will destroy the economic security of 60 million people - seniors, people with disabilities, poor families and children. They eliminate Medicare as we know it, and make deep cuts to dozens of programs of services that support America's families, from Head Start to Pell grants that help kids go to college.

Eliminating Medicare, giving seniors vouchers designed to lag far behind actual health care costs, and handing seniors' health care to the insurance companies is just plain wrong. Significantly increasing overall health care costs, as the Republican plan will do, is also wrong.

The Medicare privatization plan is part of the GOP's larger attack on our country's shrinking middle class and the promise of the American Dream: that if you work hard you can expect to have a good job with good wages and benefits, to provide a better life for your children, and to retire with dignity.

By, Ethan Rome - Executive Director, Health Care for America Now

The Republican budget proposal released by House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan of Wisconsin would give millionaires and political campaign contributors huge tax breaks while punishing seniors and working families. Ryan's extremist plan would decimate Medicare and Medicaid and terminate the Affordable Care Act, undermining the economic security of America's struggling middle class.

The Republican plan isn't based on the principle of shared sacrifice. There's no fairness. The idea that we solve big problems in this country by working together and sharing the burden can't be found. The super-rich and big corporations aren't asked to pitch in. Instead the Republicans manipulate the tax code so the rich get even richer. This budget blueprint changes the rules and reshapes this country in a breathtakingly dangerous way.

The Republican budget attacks every single one of us. Health care programs that everyone in this country depends on would be eviscerated. We'll all be covered by Medicare. Many of us have friends and relatives who receive Medicaid benefits, including millions in nursing homes. And the new health care law, the Affordable Care Act, has already made a huge difference in the lives of millions in its first year - and ultimately will directly touch 200 million of us.

The GOP's budget breaks the fundamental promise of this country: That if you work hard and play by the rules, you can take care of your family and retire with dignity and peace of mind.

How do the Republicans intend to reduce the deficit? They want seniors and hard-working families to pay more for health care and get less coverage.

The Republicans want to:

• End Medicare as we know it: The Republican budget eliminates traditional Medicare. It trades seniors' guaranteed health care benefits for vouchers that go directly to private insurance companies, risking their health and financial security when care is denied or premiums are raised. Under Ryan's plan, the value of the vouchers would rise more slowly than private premiums, forcing seniors to make up the difference and fall farther behind with each passing year. Those who can't afford it will be out of luck. The enrollment age would rise from 65 to 67.
• Give mammoth tax cuts to millionaires and big corporations. At a time when income disparities are as big as ever, the Republicans would widen the gap. This year U.S. corporations have taken the biggest profits in the nation's history and corporate taxes are at the lowest levels in generations (some corporations don't pay taxes at all!). But the Republicans want to cut another $1.5 trillion from the tax obligations of the wealthiest individuals and companies. This is a bonanza for corporate lobbyists and campaign contributors.
• Rip apart America's safety net. The Republicans want to convert Medicaid into state block grants that will shift costs to states, lower payments to hospitals and doctors, cost three million jobs, and impoverish seniors and their families by shifting to them the burden of paying for nursing homes and other essential long-term care services.
• Put insurance companies back in charge of our care. The plan would allow insurance companies to jack up our rates and deny our care whenever they want. The Republicans would do away with cost savings and consumer protections under the Affordable Care Act, like the ban on denying care to people with pre-existing conditions, the big savings on drug costs for seniors and new caps on how much of each premium dollar goes to overhead and profits. Repealing the ACA would keep 32 million uninsured people from gaining quality, affordable health coverage.
• Help Wall Street-run health insurance companies make record-breaking profits and pay their CEOs outrageous sums to deny people the care they paid for and need. The Ryan plan would hand over nearly 65 million seniors to the private health insurance industry. Private insurers selling Medicare Advantage plans already cost 11 percent more than the conventional Medicare program, the nation's most efficient health plan. There's no reason to think they could perform any more efficiently with 100 percent of Medicare beneficiaries.

The Ryan plan is an assault on the middle class that shifts billions of dollars to the big corporations and richest Americans. It robs future generations of the opportunity to do better than their parents and to share in the prosperity of a great nation. While the corporate lobbyists and campaign donors reap the benefits, the Republican plan makes the American Dream unachievable for the vast majority of people in this country.

Join the fight for these programs today. Click here to call your Member of Congress and tell them to vote NO on the Republican's extremist budget.

By Ethan Rome - Executive Director, Health Care for America Now

On Wednesday the Republicans on the powerful House Energy and Commerce Committee are holding a "public" hearing about the Affordable Care Act (ACA) at the state capitol in Harrisburg, Penn. Except they're not there to listen to the public and people like Pennsylvania's Stacie Ritter, whose family had good insurance and still had to file for bankruptcy because of massive medical bills.

Stacie and her husband Ben had to pay huge fees for the treatments their twin little girls, Hannah and Madeline, needed when they were diagnosed with leukemia. At the same time, Ben had to take time from work to help care for the twins and their other children. It was too much and they went bankrupt. Thankfully Hannah and Madeline are doing well today.

Unfortunately, the Republicans don't care about people like the Ritters. They want to repeal the new law that would help prevent other families from going through the same thing that happened to Stacie's family. They even want to repeal one of the provisions Stacie is most grateful for - the one that requires insurance companies to cover people with pre-existing conditions. That provision means Madeline and Hannah will always be able to get affordable health insurance despite their medical history.

The Republicans are in Pennsylvania on the first anniversary of this historic law to play politics and to grandstand. They've invited Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett and other partisan opponents of the law to testify. Not invited: ordinary members of the public. So it's not really a public hearing - it's a show trial, another act of political theater in the Republicans' relentless effort to repeal and undermine the new law. Just down the hall, Stacie and others are holding a reality-based hearing in the Capitol Rotunda to make sure the stories of average Pennsylvanians are heard, especially those already benefiting from the law's many cost savings and consumer protections.

Stacie Ritter's story is all too familiar. People finding coverage or claims denied. People being forced to pay more because of a pre-existing medical condition or being denied coverage outright. People getting stuck on hold for hours to get a simple issue resolved by phone. People running up against annual or lifetime coverage caps and unaffordable co-pays and deductibles that cause more than 900,000 medical bankruptcies a year. All the while, insurance company profits soar, and CEOs make millions. That's why Stacie joined Health Care for America now to fight for change.

The ACA is putting a stop to this madness. It ends the worst health insurance company abuses and protects our care. It provides cost savings, consumer protections and greater health care choices. It puts a check on out-of-control profits that fuel premium increases that are crushing families and small businesses.

The Republicans derisively call the ACA "Obamacare" and rail against the "government takeover of health care." They'd rather not tell the truth about what the law really does because that information does not help their case.

Here are the facts:

• Millions of seniors are receiving free preventive care, such as mammograms and colonoscopies, and relief from skyrocketing prescription drug prices, including $250 checks for people who reached the "donut hole" and a 50% discount on brand name drugs. The ACA has provided these savings while eliminating waste, fraud and abuse in the Medicare system.

• For small businesses, job-creating tax credits are available to help cover their employees. More small businesses are now providing coverage.
• Adult children can stay on their parents' health plans until they're 26, which provides much needed access to care and peace of mind (especially for the parents) in this tough economy.
• The ACA ends unconscionable abuses like dropping you because you fall ill or because you made a mistake in your paperwork. It bans the odious practice of denying your care or charging you more for having a pre-existing condition. It ends annual and lifetime caps on coverage.

• For the first time ever, the insurance companies are being held accountable, capping how much they can charge, limiting excessive profits and putting the brakes on bloated compensation for CEOs. Guaranteeing a good deal instead of a raw deal with our health insurance - that's what the ACA does.

The ACA is providing life-changing benefits, cost-savings and protections that are making a huge difference in people's lives right now.

The ACA is about more than health care. It's also about economic security for families struggling to make ends meet. We can't preserve and expand the middle-class if people have to worry about health care. People have enough to worry about with high unemployment, rising gas and food prices and keeping up with mortgage payments.

Instead of creating jobs and growing the economy, the Republicans are re-fighting the battles of the past and trying to take us back to the days when insurance companies had a stranglehold on our health care.

People like Stacie Ritter are insisting that we move forward. "This is America," she says. "I knew we could do better with our heath care than we've done in the past and I'm glad we have this law. We won't go back. We've got to move forward."

NOTE: Health Care for America Now has a chart that highlights the features of the Affordable Care Act and shows what the Republican repeal plan would do. You can download a printable, high-resolution version with citations here.

by Ethan Rome - Executive Director, Health Care for America Now

With the stalemate over his partisan over-reach in its 14th day, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker is now wildly violating the most basic principle of governing: If you want to solve a problem, take the deal that gives you what you need, don't hold out for everything you want.

The workers have already agreed to pension and health care concessions. That's what Walker has said he needs. But he also wants to deny Wisconsin's public service employees their freedom to have a voice at work. The workers rightly have said they won't negotiate over their right to negotiate. Walker doesn't need that to solve the state's budget deficit.

The problem is that Scott just can't let go - and he's going too far. He insists on putting the interests of his billionaire backers like the Koch Brothers ahead of growing the economy and addressing the financial insecurity of America's working and middle-class families.

People in Wisconsin and across the country are fighting back with extraordinary intensity and resolve. More than 100,000 turned out in Madison to protest this weekend. Hundreds of thousands of people rallied from New York to Los Angeles, in every state capitol and most major cities to support Wisconsin's teachers, correction officers, firefighters, nurses, administrative assistants, sanitation workers, social workers and so many others. The 14 Democratic state senators who have courageously blocked proposed legislative action on the governor's proposal continue to stand firm in the face of daily threats. This is an organic and inspired national movement demanding an end to the attacks on America's middle class - and for good reason.

If Walker and the Republican extremists get their way, it will tear the fabric of our society and destroy the American Dream. They want to shrink the middle class instead of creating jobs to secure and strengthen our communities. They want to take money out of the pockets of working families and deny small businesses the customers they need to survive. They want to cut taxes for corporations and the super rich instead of helping middle-class families educate their children and make ends meet. Walker and the Republicans like him want to give even more power and wealth to the CEOs of the insurance companies, the banks and other big corporations that don't care about anything except making excessive profits at our expense.

Exhibit A: Buried in Walker's bill to strip public employees of their rights is a provision that would allow the state to sell or contract out management of state-owned power plants without the standard competitive bidding that saves taxpayers money and protects against political corruption. And who might benefit from this special interest legislation? The energy company owned by the billionaire Koch brothers.

Gov. Walker has a fine model for reckless, partisan behavior in Speaker of the House John Boehner. Boehner and the House Republicans are serving two masters: the corporate lobbyists in Washington and the extremist Tea Party Republicans who don't seem to care what damage they do to this country in the pursuit of their partisan goals. The Republican continuing resolution is a case in point. What they cut is as telling as what they don't in these times of "shared sacrifice." The Republicans don't roll back tax cuts for the very wealthy and tax breaks for big corporations like the oil companies.

Instead the Republicans make draconian cuts that hurt the elderly and families and do nothing to create jobs. They cut student loans for working and middle-class parents trying to send their kids to college, do away with Meals on Wheels for elderly shut-ins, and lay off food-safety inspectors. The Republicans reduce the number of law enforcement officers, whack K-12 education, and kick low-income pre-schoolers out of Head Start.

The Republicans' spending plan also defunds the Affordable Care Act, which eliminates the worst health insurance company abuses and frees families, seniors and small businesses from crushing health care costs and devastating denials of care. The GOP attacks health services for women by defunding Title X and Planned Parenthood.

The Republican spending plan will even slow economic growth, according to independent experts. That means fewer jobs, not more. Now the Republicans are proposing a short-term funding extension that is just as bad as what they've proposed for the rest of the year. It is designed to create an impasse with the Senate and could force a government shutdown if they don't reach agreement by March 4.

Walker has created a crisis in Wisconsin by his extremism, and Boehner is willing to shut down the federal government over his. I know they're both more interested in pleasing the corporate lobbyists than the people they were elected to represent, but Walker and Boehner have really gone too far.

Ethan Rome - Executive Director, Health Care for America Now

Gov. Scott Walker's attack on Wisconsin's middle class and his plan to take away the rights of public service workers is wrong. It's certainly wrong for the governor to work for corporate special interests like the infamous Koch brothers instead of the people of Wisconsin. And his threat Tuesday of "dire consequences" was disingenuous and irresponsible, especially since his draconian attack on the freedom of employees to have a voice at work has nothing to do with balancing the state's budget.

It's time for the governor to stop fighting with public employees, put aside his partisan agenda and help Wisconsin move forward. The governor should work with the unions and both political parties and remember that this is not about winning a fight - it's about getting things done.

In Indiana, for example, that's what Republican Gov. Mitch Daniels has decided to do. Ideologically, Daniels and Walker are kindred spirits, and the Indiana governor is no friend of workers. But Daniels decided this is not the right time to declare war on workers. According to the Indianapolis Star, Daniels signaled Tuesday that "Republicans should drop the right-to-work bill that has brought the Indiana House to a standstill for two days and imperiled other measures."

Wisconsin's governor has created an unnecessary impasse. Gov. Walker has driven 14 Democratic state senators into hiding because it's the only way they can force a pause in the legislative process. He is staring out his office window at unprecedented protests by thousands of Wisconsinites from all walks of life. Recent polls show the public is not on his side. Everyone understands that Gov. Walker's claims about the state budget are a pretext to take away peoples' rights and shrink Wisconsin's middle class. This is no way to lead a state. The governor should work across party lines to solve this problem so Wisconsin lawmakers can move on to other issues - including the budget for the coming fiscal year.

The governor could end this crisis if he's willing to work with the unions and both political parties. As we all know, this crisis is not about the money and never was. To the extent that Wisconsin has a budget deficit, it is a problem of the governor's own making, thanks to tax breaks he just gave to corporations. The workers have already agreed to Gov. Walker's requests for concessions on pension and health care. But the governor won't budge - he continues to put his ideological agenda ahead of the people of Wisconsin. That's just plain wrong and makes little sense as a practical matter.

The governor is needlessly alienating Wisconsin's workers. I understand why the governor attacked his own work force of public-service employees in his first six weeks in office. Taking away collective-bargaining rights from all workers is an important agenda item for the big corporations and the extremists in his own political party. But this plan has backfired. The middle-class families of his state are turning against the governor. Of course people are angry. Giving tax breaks to corporations and the super rich while taking away the rights, income and benefits of middle-class families isn't fair. No state can afford this kind of strife when budget crises make "shared sacrifice" the phrase of the day. Shared means shared.

Gov. Walker should move Wisconsin forward instead of pursuing his partisan political agenda. There's no room for political games in a fragile economy. There are tough problems to solve, and that can't happen when politicians are playing politics with people's lives. Politicians like Gov. Walker shouldn't be declaring war on the middle class to appease their corporate backers. They should not talk about making "tough" decisions to reduce the standard of living for working families at the same time they increase the wealth of billionaires like the Koch brothers.

A right-wing corporate cabal funded by the Kochs is applying growing pressure on Walker and all Republicans to attack unions. Tomorrow, the Koch-led front group Americans for Prosperity will begin a Wisconsin TV and radio ad campaign to promote this assault on workers.

Now we're seeing exactly the same attacks in states like Ohio. Until these governors and politicians ask the corporations and the very rich to pay their fair share, they have no business asking the rest of us for anything.

You can join the fight — www.wearewisconsin.org.

by Ethan Rome - Executive Director, Health Care for America Now

The House Republicans seem to be saying yes. Apparently, taking away women's access to reproductive health services is an important way to create jobs and get the economy moving again.

That may explain the urgency of Rep. Mike Pence's disgraceful legislation to defund Planned Parenthood and other providers by stripping them of Title X family-planning funding, since creating jobs is the stated priority of the Republicans in Congress. The Republicans also want to take away the new cost-savings and consumer protections in the new health care law, the Affordable Care Act, because this too will apparently create jobs. This is the same GOP that wants to undermine the new law, including re-opening the abortion compromise that unambiguously maintained the prohibition against federal funds paying for abortions. This is all so important to the Republicans that they made one of the bills relating to this issue H.R. 3, among the very first taken up by the House in the 112th Congress. No wonder people are asking Speaker John Boehner, "When are the jobs?"

The GOP is gripped by two obsessions - rolling back the clock on women's health services and giving control of our health care back to the insurance companies. They want to take us back to the days when insurance companies could deny your care because you have a "pre-existing condition," drop you for getting sick and jack up your rates whenever they feel like it. They want to return to the time when being a woman was a pre-existing condition. They want to entirely eliminate family planning funds. When it comes to health care in general and women's health in particular, the Republicans don't have a legislative agenda to move forward - just a fixation on tearing things down and moving backwards.

Meanwhile, the Republicans aren't doing a single thing to create jobs. They're too busy trying to put the insurance companies back in charge of our health care. They're too busy going after vital health care institutions like Planned Parenthood. They're too busy trying to get between a woman and her doctor. That is especially galling because the insurance companies have made decisions about our health care for decades. Thanks to the Affordable Care Act, those days are over. Now the House Republicans want to be the ones making those decisions for women. This is nothing short of a war on women and their health care. And it's happening in state capitals as well as Washington, D.C.

This hypocrisy is extreme, even by the standards the Republicans have set since taking control of the House. Take Speaker Boehner's less-than-authentic comments on the matter of the President's religion and birthplace. He has said again and again that he doesn't want to tell the American people "what to think" - or tell members of his own caucus to stop lying about these basic matters of fact. The Speaker's line is offensive - a transparent wink and a nod to those who continue spreading lies about President Obama to intentionally stoke the flames of the far right.

If Boehner is not willing to "tell people what to think" about something so important and basic as the legitimacy of the president of the United States, why is it okay to tell women and their doctors what to do?

Seriously, enough already.

by Ethan Rome - Executive Director of Health Care for America Now

Rick Scott made his fortune in health care by exploiting patients and the federal government as CEO of the world's largest health care company. As governor of Florida, he's now taking away cost-saving health care benefits and patient protections from millions. But this time he's an elected official who swore to uphold the law.

Since an extremist federal judge issued a partisan (and poorly reasoned) opinion finding the Affordable Care Act (ACA) unconstitutional, Scott has been pretending the law doesn't apply to his state. Apparently Scott doesn't care that the judge is only one of four U.S. district judges who have ruled on the constitutionality of the law and that two of them have upheld it. It doesn't seem to matter to Scott that the ACA is the law of the land.

Whether it's a political stunt or the act of an extremist ideologue, Scott is hurting real Floridians in concrete ways, including millions of people with private health insurance or Medicare benefits. He's taking away a law that ends the worst insurance company abuses and frees families, seniors and businesses from crushing health care costs and devastating denials of care.

Scott's brazen disregard for the law is no surprise. He's the former CEO of Columbia/HCA Healthcare Corp and was forced to resign in 1997. That happens to be when the company pleaded guilty to a litany of criminal and civil charges, including lying to the government about how sick patients were so the company could collect bigger fees from the taxpayers. As a result, Columbia/HCA agreed to pay $1.7 billion in fines and penalties — the largest health care fraud settlement in U.S. history.

Scott's refusal now to put the new health care law into effect in Florida has serious consequences. He says it's about the people of Florida, but his action is really about giving control of our health care back to the insurance companies.

Scott should tell his constituents the truth about what he's doing — taking away dozens of cost savings and consumer protections from Florida consumers. He should tell people that he wants to return to the days when insurance companies could deny your care because you have a preexisting condition, drop you for getting sick and jack up your rates whenever they wanted.

Scott should tell cancer patients with devastating medical costs that he wants to reinstate annual and lifetime benefit limits that will force them into bankruptcy instead of providing the care they need. While he's at it the governor can let young adults know they have to quit their parents' health plans. He should go door to door and tell thousands of seniors to cough up the $250 donut-hole checks the ACA provided them to buy prescription drugs — and tell them he's ending the 50% discount they get on brand-name medicines. Scott should call the parents of sick children who finally got coverage because of the ACA and tell them he's canceling their insurance. He should also tell small businesses he's taking away their job-creating tax credits.

Since Scott is independently wealthy, why doesn't he take out ads in all of Florida's local newspapers telling families, seniors, college students and small businesses to start worrying about their health care again? He could also confess that as a rich man he has no idea what it means to be pushed around by health insurance companies or overwhelmed by spiraling costs.

Rick Scott's decision to buck the law is reckless, wrong and morally repugnant. Scott's not alone. Extremists in some states, such as Iowa, Utah and Wyoming, are following his lead, but thankfully a majority of states are appropriately moving forward with implementation–even states like Georgia, Texas, Virginia, and Wisconsin, which are part of the lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the law.

It's OK to challenge a federal law. It's not OK to unilaterally refuse to follow it. What Rick Scott is doing is unconscionable.

by Ethan Rome

You’ve probably read by now that Judge Vinson did the expected: The judge gave Republican governors and attorneys general what they wanted, a decision that advances the GOP’s extremist agenda to return control of our health care to the insurance companies. This is judicial activism on steroids. Fortunately, the U.S. Supreme Court will have the final say on the legal challenge to the Affordable Care Act, and it has corrected such lower-court mistakes when other major laws like Social Security, the minimum wage law and the Voting Rights Act were passed. Two other federal district judges have already upheld the new health care law.
Congress clearly has the authority to regulate the health insurance market, including protecting consumers from insurance industry abuses and reducing costs for families, seniors and businesses. The best way to protect consumers and control costs is to make sure everyone has health insurance, and that’s what the Affordable Care Act does.

With consumers already benefiting from the law, this litigation is really about the Republican Party protecting health insurance company profits at the expense of working families. The Republican politicians who marched in lockstep to bring this suit aren’t really interested in the new law’s individual-responsibility rule. This lawsuit is just another tactic in the Republican Party’s campaign to give our health care back to the insurance companies no matter what the cost.

The American people will not allow the courts or the Congress to bring us back to the time when insurance companies could exclude people because of pre-existing conditions, drop people for getting sick, or let benefit caps force people with serious diseases into bankruptcy.