The Republican-led House of Representatives “filed a long-awaited lawsuit Friday, alleging that the Obama administration ignored key aspects of its health care reform law when implementing the sweeping new government program.” Politico,
President Barack Obama is not named as a defendant; the lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Washington, names as defendants Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Mathews Burwell, Treasury Secretary Jack Lew and their departments.
The White House dismissed the lawsuit Friday as meritless and as a waste of money.
The new lawsuit claims that two specific aspects of implementation of the Obamacare law violated the terms of the legislation.
First, the suit complains about repeated delays of the employer mandate, which was supposed to kick in in January of this year. The administration delayed the requirement until next year for some employers and until 2016 for others.
Second, the litigation challenges payments to insurance companies under a cost-sharing provision that the suit argues was never authorized by law. Such “offset” payments amounted to $3 billion in 2014 and could total $175 billion over 10 years, the House claims.
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