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Business Insurance/ ­- Article, Dom, 15 de Abril de 2012
CLIPPING INTERNACIONAL (Supreme Court)
COMMENTARY: Court"s ultimate
health care reform ruling still unclear
Just before the Supreme Court began oral arguments
on the health care reform law last month, I thought
back to the last time I covered an oral argument before
the high court.
It was in February 1990. The issue before the
Supreme Court was whether the Pension Benefit
Guaranty Corp. had the right to return to a company a
pension plan the agency previously had taken over.
The case involved several massively underfunded
pension plans sponsored by LTV Corp., a financially
distressed steel producer. In 1987, the PBGC took
over three LTV plans and their $2 billion in unfunded
liabilities after the company said it no longer could
afford to make contributions.
A few months later, LTV and the United Steelworkers
union reached an agreement on a new low­-cost
pension program that would guarantee to pay most of
the difference between benefits promised by LTV and
those guaranteed by the PBGC.
Soon thereafter, the PBGC returned the terminated
plans to LTV, contending that the new LTV plans were
an illegal continuation of the old plans with benefits
now largely paid by the PBGC. In returning the plans
to LTV, the PBGC said it would not pay benefits to
plan participants. LTV immediately filed suit to stop the
PBGC"s action.
A multiyear court battle followed, with the case
ultimately going to the Supreme Court. Twenty­-two
years have passed, but I still can vividly recall what
then­-Chief Justice William Rehnquist said as LTV"s
attorney began his arguments.
Justice Rehnquist cut off the attorney and suggested
that LTV"s action"s were an attempt to “fob­-off” the
pension plan liabilities onto the PBGC. In a few words,
Justice Rehnquist got to the heart of the issue and
made a comment that indicated how he would later
rule. A few months later, the Supreme Court, in an 8­-1
ruling, sided with the PBGC.
But in the roughly six hours of oral arguments on the
health care reform law, I didn"t hear any one­-liners that
definitively indicated how any justice will rule on two
key issues before the court: Is the law"s individual
mandate unconstitutional? And, if it is, is the mandate
so intertwined with the broader law that the entire law
would fall if the court rules the mandate is
unconstitutional?
The justices asked many tough questions, but I don"t
have any more of a clue to what their ruling on those
issues will be than I did before the arguments.
The question I kept asking myself was why the law
was before the Supreme Court. How was it the law
was drafted in such a way that critical provisions were
vulnerable to legal attack?
The answer to that question is clear and it speaks to
the breakdown of our political system. The legislation
did not go through what was once the traditional
extended review process. For the most part, committee
consideration was hasty, and there wasn"t even a joint
conference committee to resolve differences between
House­- and Senate­-passed bills and pass a carefully
reviewed and crafted final bill.
Both parties share in the blame. Unless the two parties
can once again try to work together, more of our
laws—the few that are passed—will end up being
challenged in court.
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