NFIB to join lawsuit against health law

"The nation's most influential small business lobby is joining a court challenge to President Barack Obama's health care overhaul, arguing that Americans cannot be required under the Constitution to obtain insurance coverage," The Associated Press reports. "The National Federation of Independent Business will announce Friday it is joining a federal lawsuit filed in Florida by 20 state attorneys general and governors, NFIB President Dan Danner said in an interview. All but one of the state officials are Republicans ... NFIB's involvement ensures that constitutional arguments for overturning the health care law — even if they fail to sway federal judges — will be extensively aired in the fall campaigns." The group's lawyer, Karen Harned, says the organization joined the lawsuit because of increasing opposition to the law from small business owners (Alonso-Zaldivar, 5/14).

WOKV.com: "At least 17 other states joined Florida in a federal lawsuit filed in March after Obama signed his 10-year, $938-billion health care bill into law. The Republican-controlled Florida Legislature passed a bill last month backing the suit" (Jones, 5/14).

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This article was reprinted from khn.org with permission from the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. Kaiser Health News, an editorially independent news service, is a program of the Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonpartisan health care policy research organization unaffiliated with Kaiser Permanente.