AUSTIN (Legal Newsline) – Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton recently filed a suit against the federal government over the Affordable Care Act.
Paxton pursued the suit because of a regulation that allegedly forces states to pay an unconstitutional tax to Washington that funds the act. The law, according to the attorney general’s office, threatens to cut off Medicaid funds for millions of Texas citizens unless they pay hundreds of millions in tax dollars to fund the Affordable Care Act.
“This threat to cut Medicaid funding to Texans unless the state continues to pay hundreds of millions in taxes to Washington amounts to the very ‘gun to the head’ the Supreme Court warned about in earlier rulings on Obamacare,” Paxton said. “Not only is the federal government threatening the health care needs of millions of Texans, but it is doing so using Texans’ own money, collected from them through taxes. This represents yet another huge overstep of authority for this administration, which once again has demonstrated their willingness to circumvent the Constitution in order to achieve their policy goals.”
The rule the suit fights, made by the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services, allegedly allows the Actuarial Standards Board, a private company, to determine that Medicaid insurance rates need to include a health insurance providers fee, which Paxton believes to be unconstitutional.