Can someone who knows the law, please explain why Obama's DOJ is working against Medicaid recipients? From today's NYT:
Medicaid recipients and health care providers cannot sue state officials to challenge cuts in Medicaid payments, even if such cuts compromise access to health care for poor people, the Obama administration has told the Supreme Court.
Is there some reason they need to argue this as a means to support those who must rely on Medicaid?
Federal law says Medicaid rates must be “sufficient to enlist enough providers” so that Medicaid recipients have access to care to the same extent as the general population in an area.
In a friend-of-the court brief filed Thursday in the Supreme Court, the Justice Department said that no federal law allowed private individuals to sue states to enforce this standard.
Such lawsuits “would not be compatible” with the means of enforcement envisioned by Congress, which relies on the secretary of health and human services to make sure states comply, the administration said in the brief, by the acting solicitor general, Neal K. Katyal.
Needless to say,
Consumer advocates were dismayed by the administration’s position, which they said undermined Medicaid recipients’ rights and access to the courts.
“I find it appalling that the solicitor general in a Democratic administration would assert in a Supreme Court brief that businesses can challenge state regulation under the supremacy clause, but that poor recipients of Medicaid cannot challenge state violations of federal law,” said Prof. Timothy S. Jost, an expert on health law at Washington and Lee University, who is usually sympathetic to the administration.
I could see not filing a brief, but filing one against the interests of Medicaid recipients is beyond me. How can anyone believe Obama is even center-left when he lets his DOJ pull crap like this? Center-right is more like it.
Or am I just ignorant of the law? And, even so, why would the DOJ would go out of its way to make the argument?