Pa. bill aims at health coverage

HARRISBURG - Pennsylvania on Monday became the latest state to consider a bill to shield itself from a key portion of the new federal health-care law that will require most Americans to buy health insurance or face potential fines starting in 2014.

The Republican-sponsored bill passed the state House Health Committee on a party-line vote, 14-9.

Democrats criticized the bill as a violation of the U.S. Constitution that will do nothing to help more people afford health insurance. But committee Chairman Matt Baker (R., Tioga) said the bill would give Pennsylvania more legal avenues to challenge the federal law in court.

"It gets singularly to the mandate issue of forcing people to buy insurance that they may not want, they may not need and they don't even have a choice," Baker told reporters after the vote.

The legal impact of any state measure is questionable, since courts generally have held that federal laws trump those in states. And while Baker said the state arguably could enforce such a law, he also acknowledged that the matter was likely to be settled by the U.S. Supreme Court before the insurance requirement in the federal law takes effect in three years.

The federal law was passed by a Democratic-controlled Congress and was signed by President Obama last March. In Harrisburg, spokesmen for state House and Senate GOP leaders said Monday they could not predict whether or when the bill will reach a floor vote, although Baker said House Majority Leader Mike Turzai (R., Allegheny) had encouraged him to move it out of his committee. A related bill is pending in a state Senate committee.

Pennsylvania already is party to a states' lawsuit that challenges the federal insurance requirement.

The law's core requirement is that Americans carry health insurance except in cases of financial hardship. Starting in 2014, those who cannot show they are covered by an employer, government program, or their own policy would face fines by the Internal Revenue Service.

Defenders of the law say a system of health insurance would not work if people were allowed to avoid paying for it until they need medical attention because premiums collected from the healthy pay the cost of care for the sick.

A number of states are taking up challenges. The one advanced by Baker is based on a model version written by the American Legislative Exchange Council, a Washington nonprofit that promotes limited government.

Six states - Virginia, Idaho, Arizona, Georgia, Missouri, and Louisiana - already have enacted laws similar to the one Baker advocates, according to the council's tally, while Oklahoma and Arizona have enacted constitutional amendments.

The Health Committee did not hold a hearing on the bill, which Baker titled the "Freedom of Choice in Health Care Act," and Republicans rejected a Democratic effort to table the bill in favor of holding hearings on it.

Before being elected governor in November, then-Attorney General Tom Corbett, a Republican, hauled the state into the fray against the federal insurance requirement by joining a states' lawsuit in a Florida federal court. The judge last week agreed with the challenge, and the Justice Department said it would appeal.