Consumer Law

Massachusetts Attorney General Files Amicus Brief in Support of Federal Health Care Reform Legislation

By Brian Wolfman

Massachusetts was the first state in the nation to enact comprehensive health care reform that included an individual mandate -- that is, a requirement that some citizens of Massachusetts either purchase health care insurance or pay a tax (or fine) to support the Commonwealth's program. This legislation is now sometimes referred to as "Romney Care," after Mitt Romney, the governor of Massachusetts at the time the Massachusetts legislation was enacted. Romney supported and signed much of the legislation, including the individual mandate. (He vetoed a handful of sections, but none bear on the mandate.) Romney now professes vehement opposition to the federal legislation.

No doubt you have heard much about states suing the federal government over the constitutionality of the federal health care legislation, patterned in part on the Massachusetts legislation. One of those suits is now pending in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit. The challengers claim that the federal legislation's individual mandate is unconstitutional because Congress lacked the Commerce power to pass it. Massachusetts, through its Attorney General Martha Coakley, has just filed this amicus brief in the Fourth Circuit, explaining the Commonwealth's experience with the individual mandate and why, in the Commonwealth's view, an individual mandate on the federal level is constitutional. Read Coakley's press release as well.

Full post as published by CL&P Blog on March 10, 2011 (boomark / email).