Obamacare Spending Ruled Unconstitutional

Federal judge rules that HHS has been illegally subsidizing insurance companies

American Spectator

Yesterday, U.S. District Judge Rosemary Collyer dealt the Obama administration an important defeat that will affect its ability to keep Obamacare afloat. The case, House of Representatives v. Burwell, involves reimbursements the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has been paying to insurers to keep out-of-pocket costs artificially low for patients with incomes up to 250 percent of the federal poverty line.

Congress refused to appropriate the funds for this scheme, but HHS reimbursed the insurers anyway, whereupon the House sued the Obama administration. Judge Collyer ruled that the payment of such reimbursements without congressional authorization “violates the Constitution.”

Her ruling essentially holds that the Obama administration flouted the Constitution’s Appropriations Clause by spending funds that hadn’t been appropriated by the only branch of government with the power to authorize spending. The framers unambiguously vested the legislative branch with the “power of the purse,” and Judge Collyer was at pains to point that out in her ruling:....To Read More....