Speaker Ryan Protects Congress’ “Power of the Purse”
This morning, Speaker Ryan’s office announced that it had filed an amicus curiae brief in one of the pending lawsuits regarding Obamacare’s risk corridors — this one filed by Health Republic. Here’s a quick explainer on the filing and its importance:
What’s Happening? Filed by a failed Oregon co-op, the Health Republic case was the first case filed over unpaid risk corridor claims, back in February. Over the summer, the Justice Department moved to dismiss the case — but solely on the grounds that the case was not yet ripe to be heard by the federal courts.
In the past few weeks, as filing deadlines in other, later risk corridor cases arose, the Justice Department shifted tactics by embarking on a more robust defense. In those later filings, Justice argued not only that insurers do not have a claim for unpaid risk corridor funds now, but that they will not ever have a claim to those funds — because Obamacare never included an explicit appropriation for risk corridors in the law itself, and because Congress further clarified its position when it explicitly made the program budget-neutral in December 2014.
Speaker Ryan’s filing today officially makes the court hearing the Health Republic case aware of the Justice Department’s new position. It argues that the Health Republic case, like the other risk corridor cases, should not just be dismissed due to lack of ripeness, but should be dismissed with prejudice on the merits.
Why Does It Matter? The House’s filing today matters for three reasons:
- It signifies the willingness of Congress to intervene to protect its institutional prerogatives — namely its “power of the purse,” which it has exercised in this case, by explicitly denying the transfer of taxpayer funds to the risk corridor program;
- It officially makes the court aware of the arguments on the merits — making it tougher for the Justice Department subsequently to settle the claims, as some within the Administration apparently wish to do; and
- It introduces a new legal precedent NOT previously cited by the Justice Department in its other risk corridor briefs earlier this month — specifically, the case of Highland Falls-Fort Montgomery School District v. United States. In that case, a statute created an entitlement to benefits for school districts, but Congress later appropriated less than the full amount under the statutory formula — causing the Highland Falls district to sue to obtain the shortfall. That lawsuit was dismissed by the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, which found that “we have great difficulty imagining a more direct statement of congressional intent than the instructions in the appropriations statutes at issue here.” In other words, when Congress speaks with a clear voice — as it did by choosing to make the risk corridor program budget-neutral — Congress gets the last word.
In keeping with the Highland Falls precedent, I’ll give Congress, in the form of Speaker Ryan’s amicus filing, the last word here as well:
Allegedly in light of a non-existent “litigation risk,” HHS recently took the extraordinary step of urging insurers to enter into settlement agreements with the United States in order to receive payment on their meritless claims. In other words, HHS is trying to force the U.S. Treasury to disburse billions of dollars of taxpayer funds to insurance companies even though DOJ has convincingly demonstrated that HHS has no legal obligation (and no legal right) to pay these sums. The House strongly disagrees with this scheme to subvert Congressional intent by engineering a massive giveaway of taxpayer money.