You would think that once the Supreme Court ruled that the Affordable Care Act was constitutional that that would settle things, but then you would not be Steve Hotze.
It’s constitutional – deal with it
Steve Hotze, a Houston-area physician and major Republican campaign donor who has built his career around alternative medicine, says he is filing suit against the federal government to try to prevent the enforcement of the Affordable Care Act in Texas.
He’ll announce the suit, to be filed against U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, on Tuesday morning in a press conference hosted by Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst.
Hotze, the president of Conservative Republicans of Texas, said his suit will address “new and unconstitutional problems that stem from Obamacare.”
“It is imperative that Texas challenge this unwarranted federal overreach and ensure that Texans maintain the most innovative and economically viable health care system in the country,” he wrote in a statement.
Hotze has built a lucrative practice in suburban Houston around nontraditional therapies and treatments for allergies, thyroid problems and yeast infections. He’s best known for promoting natural progesterone replacement therapy for women, a treatment the FDA has questioned the effectiveness of. As recently as 2011, he had a daily health and wellness show on Republican Sen. Dan Patrick’s Houston radio station, KSEV.
At first I thought this was just another example of wingnut rage against the machine, another desperate act by another impotent Obama hater who doesn’t care about the millions of people that lack access to health care. But then I remembered that Hotze is not a traditional doctor as we tend to think of them, and as a commenter on that Trib story suggests this may simply be about reforms in Obamacare affecting his own bottom line. It’s not clear to me how or why that might be the case, however, since alternate medicine is largely included in the Affordable Care Act, and as that Press story notes, insurance companies had already refused to pay for Hotze’s drugs, supplements, and what have you that you could only get at his in-house pharmacy. The Trib story is now updated, and it fills in some details:
The lawsuit presents two constitutional challenges: First, it argues that the ACA violates the rule that requires revenue-raising bills to begin the U.S. House, because the original bill began as a tax credit bill for veterans —not a revenue-raising bill. Second, the lawsuit argues that the ACA violates the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution by essentially requiring citizens to pay money to other citizens by compelling employers to pay private insurance companies for health coverage.
Because Hotze’s business, Braidwood Management, has more than 50 employees, the law requires him to purchase employee health insurance or pay a $2,000 penalty for every full-time employee above a 30-employee threshold.
“This is going to be a huge expense. I’m grateful that Dr. Hotze is stepping forward,” state Sen. Dan Patrick, R-Houston, said at the press conference. “I think he’ll have the support of many business owners and people around the state.”
Hotze said Gov. Rick Perry, Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst and Attorney General Greg Abbott were made aware of his intention to file a lawsuit, and none objected. Dewhurst was originally scheduled to speak at the press conference but did not attend.
The state of Texas will not be involved in pursuing or paying for the lawsuit. Hotze plans to cover the costs of the suit and has established a legal defense fund for other individuals and businesses to donate to his cause.
I’m not a lawyer, and having read numerous analyses when the first lawsuit was filed about how it was going to get slamdunked by SCOTUS I’m not going to say that it’s bogus and doomed to fail. But I will note that none of Perry, Dewhurst, or Abbott bothered to show up to Hotze’s press conference, and none will be helping out with it. I mean, if Greg “I sue the Obama administration for fun” Abbott isn’t right there holding Hotze’s hand, that suggests to me that maybe he’s not all that high on the merits of the suit. Indeed, Texas Politics adds on about that:
Phillip Martin of the progressive activist group Progress Texas said: “Hotze’s lawsuit appears to be a copy-cat lawsuit of one already filed by the Pacific Legal Foundation. As the Department of Justice has already stated, the Patient Protection Affordable Care Act actually began as House Resolution 3590. It went through a ‘gut and amend’ process in the Senate, and became the law as it is today. In the history of the Supreme Court, only 8 “Origination Clause” cases – like the one presented by the Pacific Legal Foundation and copied, months after the fact, by Hotze – have been heard, and not once has the court invalidated an act of Congress because of it.”
The Progress Texas blog cites that same Houston Press story I linked to above, which includes a summary of some of Hotze’s wacko beliefs. I haven’t seen a copy of the lawsuit itself so I can’t tell you any more about it, but hopefully it will appear online eventually. The Observer has more.