After president Obama signed the newly passed healthcare reform bill into law, 14 states challenged the legislation by filing suit in Federal Court.
Twelve states joined Florida’s Attorney General in the suit filed in Pensacola’s Federal Court. They are South Carolina, Nebraska, Texas, Utah, Louisiana, Alabama, Michigan, Colorado and the commonwealth of Pennsylvania. The commonwealth of Virginia filed suit separately.
The plaintiffs claim they want to protect individuals’ freedom to pay their healthcare bills on their own rather than be forced by the federal government to buy insurance.
“This is a tax or a penalty on just living, and that’s unconstitutional,” McCollum said, adding that “there’s no provision in the Constitution of the United States giving Congress the power to do that.”
Meanwhile, the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) has said 38 states have either filed or announced their intentions to file ALEC’s Freedom of Choice in Health Care Act that would “stop ObamaCare at the state line.”
The act has already been passed by one legislative chamber in Georgia, Missouri, Oklahoma and Tennessee, and is expected to be heard on the floor in Alabama, Kansas and Michigan.
