I’ve written about this case several times here at the AmSpec, but now it gets a new boost from the Medicaid part of the Supreme Court’s ObamaCare decision. Basically, the feds say you cannot decline Medicare benefits unless you forfeit all your Social Security benefits too. It’s crazy. Five plaintiffs are challenging this illegal bureaucratic rule. The high court says there are limits to governmen’t power to coercively use its spending authority to force other “benefits” down our throats. Hence, a new angle to an already strong suit.
Read about it here.
Here’s a taste:
Or, as the new petition puts it, if “a robber gives you a choice between your money and your life,” that’s notreally a choice – and neither are the sorts of coercion involved in both the states’ Medicaid dilemma andthe citizens’ decision whether to forfeit potentially hundreds of thousands of dollars of SS benefits due to this moronic POMS rule.
The new petition makes a strong case that the same principles governing the decision to strike down the coercive parts of ObamaCare’s Medicaid provisions also should apply to the government’s attempt to force citizens to accept Medicare coverage they don’t want. “In neither case,” write the plaintiffs, “may the government constitutionally ask a party to sacrifice one entitlement for the refusal to accept a second.”
Let’s hope the Supreme Court grants cert.