Indiana joins legal challenge to health care overhaul

Indiana is joining 13 other states in challenging the nation's nearly $1 trillion health care overhaul — a lawsuit the state's attorney general insisted Monday arose not from politics but a need to answer serious constitutional questions.

Attorney General Greg Zoeller said Indiana will join an amended version of the lawsuit expected to be filed soon in a federal court in Florida, becoming the 14th plaintiff.

The original suit was filed last week by the attorneys general of 13 states minutes after President Barack Obama signed the 10-year $938 billion health care bill into law following a bitter partisan battle in Congress. It contends that the legislation is unconstitutional.

Zoeller said the law, which will extend health coverage to 32 million uninsured Americans, raises several constitutional questions, including whether Congress has the authority to enact the law's mandate that most Americans purchase health insurance.

He said that issue, as well as new demands he said it would place on state sovereignty, enter "uncharted territory" and need to be answered by the courts. Zoeller said he and the other attorneys general hope the case is taken up by the U.S. Supreme Court.

"This is such a large program that's almost unprecedented — everybody's going to need to know the answer to whether this is constitutional or not," he said. "Even the people who support it have as much interest to know whether it's going to be upheld by the Supreme Court."

Aside from insuring millions of uninsured Americans, the law's provisions include banning insurance companies from denying coverage to people with pre-existing medical conditions.

But Zoeller, a Republican, warned in a February report requested by U.S. Sen. Richard Lugar, R-Ind., that the law would add about half a million more Indiana residents to the Medicaid rolls, increasing Indiana's Medicaid costs by $2.4 billion over 10 years. That report also said the law would cost Indiana about $750 million by 2019 by diverting drug-rebate savings from the states to the federal government and create other unintended consequences.

Zoeller said that while Gov. Mitch Daniels, a fellow Republican, had encouraged him to challenge the federal health overhaul the governor let him know the decision was up to him.

Indiana Democratic Party Chair Dan Parker called the lawsuit "pure partisan politics" and predicted that it would not be successful based on what he said was wide agreement among legal scholars that the law is constitutional.

Actually, legal experts have expressed wide disagreement over the issue.

Parker said the law will help more than 820,000 Indiana residents who do not currently have health insurance, while about 76,000 small Indiana businesses will get a tax credit to make premiums more affordable.

"Hoosiers simply can't afford any more delays or obstruction from Mitch Daniels and Greg Zoeller — they want reform implemented now," Parker said in a statement.

U.S. Rep. Andre Carson, D-Ind., said in a statement Monday that he is disappointed by Zoeller's decision to join Indiana to the lawsuit, calling the suit "political posturing."

Although only one of the 14 attorneys general — James "Buddy" Caldwell of Louisiana — is a Democrat, Zoeller said his decision to join the suit was not politically motivated.

"I'll stand by the proposition that when the sovereignty of our state government is in question I think it's really a responsibility to raise the challenge," he said.

Zoeller said the initial cost of the original lawsuit was capped at $50,000, and the cost of mounting the suit would be split among the 14 states. He said it's unclear how that cost would be divided and how much Indiana's share might be.

Aside from the 14 states suing together to halt the health care overhaul law, a 15th state, Virginia, has brought a separate challenge.