Senate Minority Mitch McConnell is going to file an amicus brief supporting a federal lawsuit challenging the Affordable Care Act.
McConnell argues in his brief, obtained by POLITICO, that the requirement that nearly all Americans buy insurance “dramatically oversteps the bounds of the Commerce [Clause] which has always been understood as a power to regulate, and not to compel, economic activity.” He also argues that if the mandate is deemed constitutional, there will no longer be any real limit on Congress’ power to regulate citizens’ activity....
McConnell asked fellow lawmakers late Tuesday to cosign the amicus brief, which he plans to file soon, a McConnell spokesman said.
McConnell is fighting a political fight, trying to stave off a DeMint challenge, so he's gone all in on repeal trying to save his leadership skin. But he's got a problem: the insurers don't agree. The mandate is a good thing for them--it brings them a lot more customers, and on fairly decent terms for them. It's the only provision that there's any real support for repealing in the public, but it was a make or break provision to get insurers on board, along with killing the public option.
Here's one CEO:
I don't think it's in our society's best interest to expend energy in repealing the law," David Cordani told the Reuters Health Summit in New York. "Our country expended over a year of sweat equity around the formation of it."
....
Cordani, whose company is one of the largest U.S. health insurance providers, said he does not see any immediate significant changes and is "knee-deep" in implementing various provisions affecting his company and other insurers....
Still, Cordani said there is room to do more to further contain the United States' spiraling healthcare costs, such as expanding more consumer-directed options like health savings accounts and improving the nation's payment system.
Such changes should not be partisan, however, he said.
"Our orientation is a little agnostic of how you get there," Cordani said at the summit.
The insurers also know that a repeal would be vetoed by Obama, and the Republicans don't have the numbers to override a veto. They need to spend their time and energy on trying to fight specific provisions--like trying to bring down the medical loss ratio so they can make more profit, or working the regulators drawing up the regulations. Given that the law is highly unlikely to be overturned by the courts, and even more unlikely to be repealed, they have more important things to spend time and energy on.
McConnell's battle is going to be a losing one, and it's probably not going to endear him to DeMint's crowd anyway. So he try to make teh Senate be nothing but all repeal all the time, but it's going to get very old, very soon.