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Pulling back the curtains on wage-theft enforcement in MN; Trump's latest attack is on RFK, Jr; NM LGBTQ+ equality group endorses 2024 'Rock Star' candidates; Michigan's youth justice reforms: Expanded diversion, no fees.

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Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg says rebuilding Baltimore's Key Bridge will be challenging and expensive. An Alabama Democrat flips a state legislature seat and former Connecticut senator Joe Lieberman dies at 82.

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Historic wildfires could create housing and health issues for rural Texans, a Kentucky program helps prison parolees start a new life, and descendants of Nicodemus, Kansas celebrate the Black settlers who journeyed across the 1870s plains seeking self-governance.

Ohio Court Hears Health Care Reform Challenge

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Wednesday, June 1, 2011   

CINCINNATI - A major case in the health-care reform debate comes to an Ohio courtroom today.

Three judges on the U.S. 6th Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati will hear arguments about the constitutionality of the part of the Affordable Care Act that requires Americans to buy health insurance or face a penalty.

Political motives are behind these types of legal challenge to the new law, says state Sen. Mike Skindell, D-Lakewood, who signed an amicus brief in the case in favor of reform.

"A lot of the attacks made on health-care reform are from folks that are seeking higher office. It's been a political issue, and they want to take us back to where we had over 45 million people uninsured."

If the individual-responsibility mandate is upheld, opponents say, it would open the door for lawmakers to regulate other types of activity. Supporters believe the law is constitutional, citing Congress' broad authority to regulate interstate commerce.

Today's hearing is the appeal of a lawsuit in a federal district court in Michigan, which found the mandate to be constitutional and had dismissed the case last fall.

The 83 percent of Americans who have health insurance will not be affected by individual mandate, says Col Owens, co-chair of Ohio Consumers for Health Coverage, adding that it's a critical part of the success of this market-based reform.

"If you pull the mandate out, then the insurance industry is going to be overwhelmed by people who are sick and who are applying for coverage and healthy people who are staying out of the market - and it's not going to work."

The Affordable Care Act already is helping Ohioans, although the most dramatic changes won't go into effect until 2014. The law already prohibits insurers from denying coverage based on pre-existing conditions, allows tax credits for small businesses to insure their workers, eliminates annual or lifetime caps on coverage, and allows young adults to stay on their parents' coverage until age 26.


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