Release: Attorney General Jackley Joins Lawsuit Challenging the Affordable Care Act

Pat Powers

From the Attorney General’s office:

Attorney General Jackley Joins Lawsuit Challenging the Affordable Care Act

PIERRE, S.D. – Attorney General Marty Jackley announces that South Dakota has joined 20 other State Attorneys General in a lawsuit challenging the Affordable Care Act.

“South Dakotan’s deserve more affordable health insurance than mandated Obamacare has provided. I am joining with other State Attorneys General to challenge the federal takeover of healthcare to provide our state and South Dakotans more

affordable options for healthcare,” said Jackley. “The original 5 to 4 Supreme Court decision was based not on healthcare but on Congress’ decision to tax us, and it is time to once and for all end this federal mandate to allow medical doctors more freedom to care for patients and private industry to compete for lower insurance premiums.”

As stated in the Attorneys General’s complaint seeking declaratory and injunctive relief, “Following the enactment of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017, the country is left only with Congress’s naked intent to impose an individual mandate on most Americans to buy health insurance, without the fig leaf of a tax penalty to salvage its unconstitutionality.”

The recently enacted tax bill eliminates the tax penalty for failure to obtain health care insurance under the ACA. But in the new tax bill, Congress did not eliminate the mandate to obtain health insurance. The suit alleges that the mandate to obtain health insurance is therefore rendered unconstitutional.

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And from his campaign:

16 thoughts on “Release: Attorney General Jackley Joins Lawsuit Challenging the Affordable Care Act”

  1. You accept this logic and the SCOTUS does the same, then you begin the unraveling of Medicare and Social Security too. Perhaps, some of you wish this, but such a reality will destroy some fundamental parts of the middle class and the ability to afford a level of dignity for retirement for most Americans.

    Chief Justice Roberts helped to create the majority on ObamaCare by claiming it was a tax. He obviously did this to make sure the commerce clause was not reinterpreted in a way which would then place Medicare and Social Security in jeopardy from a constitutional standpoint. But if this lawsuit goes forward, and is successful with a conservative Supreme Court, it will mean the beginning of the undoing of two major safety nets, which most Americans depend upon….

    1. Classic “swamp” redirect. This lawsuit has nothing to do with eliminating Medicare or SS. I challenge you to complete your argument by detailing how the safety nets will be undone. I support Jackley & the other AG’s.

      1. Because if you read the ObamaCare decision, often the minority speaks as if they are the majority and that is because Roberts was initially going to rule with the minority and make all of ObamaCare unconstitutional. But to do this would have required an assault upon the commerce clause of the Constitution in such a way that an argument could then be made in later challenges that Medicare and Social Security were an overreach of the commerce clause as well. So Roberts used the tax argument to make ObamaCare for the most part constitutional and to side step any issue involving the commerce clause. But what this lawsuit does is that it opens up a can of worms concerning the commerce clause – assuming that we get a conservative decision on it – which will then lay the groundwork for possibly making SS and Medicare unconstitutional too as an overreach of the Congress via the commerce clause….

  2. Classic “swamp” redirect. This lawsuit has nothing to do with eliminating Medicare or SS. I challenge you to complete your argument by detailing how the safety nets will be undone. I support Jackley & the other AG’s.

    1. Yeah, that works great in Britain doesn’t it?
      What has ObummerCare done besides increase the cost of health insurance for most, give free care to some, and make others buy something they didn’t want? I know those who didn’t have health insurance are all for it, but a lot of us who had health insurance before Obama stuck his nose into things aren’t very appreciative of his socialist medicine.

      I wish he and his family had to be on his own socialized medicine instead of sucking off the teat of the American people for the rest of his life.

      Oh, and how about not spending so much taxpayer money on his stupid library. They guy has never had to meet a budget and never will. He didn’t have a clue about finances before he got into office, and he surrounded himself with socialist twits to the country’s detriment.

      1. Germany? Norway? Just had a friend get a back surgery in Germany that he could not get in the US. He had two other back surgeries here in the US but they did not help. He said the healthcare in Germany put the US to shame and he has had a great result and wish he had gone to Germany the 1st time.

      2. Germans have high taxes but they know what they are getting with all the services and benefits that are covered. At least to my understanding they have zero debt and is an export market.

      4. Hum, let’s see. There no longer is an precondition clause, the Medicare “donut hole” is gone. Physicals are a part of your preventative care and built entirely into the initial cost of the insurance. Kids can stay on their parents insurance until age 26. You can now buy insurance through a network, which means you can quit your job and start your own business with a viable insurance option available to you as a self-employed person. And most employers are now required to carry insurance options for their employees.

          1. Just one right now, but it doesn’t help when you get rid of the mandate which the GOP did.

  4. I don’t know how South Dakota can be the “third most Obamacare compliant state” (Lora Hubble) and suing over it at the same time.

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