Senate votes on Obama healthcare today, but many lawsuit challenges already taking shape

(UPDATE: As predicted, the Senate did approve the measure. Poetic Ticket coverage available here.)

Well, this morning is the biggest Senate vote of all-time ever. Or at least the next one ever. On healthcare. no longer called healthcare reform.

But wait!

After all of this healthcare talk, all of this healthcare debate, all of the healthcare writing and maneuvering and advertising and arguing. After all of this, none of it may matter. Or at least significant parts of it.

Because even as President Obama packs his Speedo and cool shades to ensconce his entourage to Hawaii through New Year's, squadrons of opposing lawyers are lining up and writing up their legal briefs for promised challenges to the measure in court.

Yes, as Arianna Huiffington points out here, this Senate bill leaves absolutely no special interest behind. Not a one

But assuming the deals hold and the Senate passes this version this morning, if some kind of legislative healthcare measure gets rewritten and through a Senate-House conference and then re-passed in both houses by the whopping but increasingly nervous Democratic majorities with something like the language carried in its 2,000-plus pages now and subsequently signed by Obama, a series of legal challenges are certain.

Good news for any involved attorney with holiday bills.

And if happy Harry Reid and nattering Nancy Pelosi amend the bill's language in anticipation of the emerging legal concerns, then the carefully-calculated political deal -- or sale, depending on your viewpoint -- could crumble.

News this morning that legal opposition is congealing around two major areas of concern: the nationwide individual requirement to force every American to buy health insurance and the exemption of several states from some requirements. (Hello, Nebraska, which got a special Medicaid subsidy deal from Reid for Sen. Ben Nelson's vote worth an estimated $100 million in coming years.)

"This thing may be stillborn even if it passes," said one attorney involved in preparing a legal challenge.

When a similar requirement was under consideration back in the first Bill Clinton administration, analysts called it "an unprecedented form of federal action" similar to the military draft and doubtfully authorized by current laws.

Administration officials liken the new federal insurance mandate to laws requiring the purchase of auto liability insurance by licensed drivers. However, opponents point out, those are state laws, they are designed to protect others not the insured drivers and individuals can exempt themselves by not driving. Despite financial subsidies for some, there are no opt-out provisions in the proposed Democrat healthcare legislation.

Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina said his state would be filing suit, charging that the numerous sweetheart deals like Nebraska's violated the Constitution's equal protection clause. More details here.

-- Andrew Malcolm

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Photo: Associated Press (Reid and Pelosi in a pre-holiday mood).

Comments

[Mary Mocio]

Catholics Against Obama Care is calling Catholics as well as those of other denominations to pray and fast for the special intention that Obama health care reform be defeated.Catholics Against Obama Care acknowledges that Catholic Church has always advocated health care reform; but Obamacare, as delineated in This Bill, is not health care -- it is death care. Mandated abortion, health care rationing, and euthanasia are not health care. Obamacare is government control over people's lives and, as Jon Voight points out the removal of a person's free will. Voight said in an interview on Fox News with Mike Huckabee, "They're taking away God's first gift to man -- our free will and no man no matter what his title, even if he's president of the United States, has the consent of God to decide he's God."Jean M. Heimann, the founder of Catholics Against Obama Care, is a Catholic freelance writer and also the author and administrator of the award-winning weblog Catholic Fire.
.
Catholics Against Obama Care, a grassroots movement, which began on August 22, the feast day of the Queenship of Mary, has selected the Mother of God to be the group’s special intercessor in their efforts to defeat this anti-Catholic, anti-life bill. Pray for Obama's conversion, O Holy Mother.

[devans00]

As much as I dislike Republicans in general, I have to agree with Sen. Lindsey Graham on the unfairness of the sweetheart deals like the one Sen. Ben Nelson got for his state of Nebraska.

What happened to "we're all in this together"? Why should people who live in Nebraska get a break the whole country should have, just because their Senator is a selfish obstructionist?

I'm so sick of the gamesmanship going on in Congress to the disadvantage of regular Americans.

[Gerry in Maine]

We have Nazis/Marxists in the Congress. Nattering is a generously kind description of Pelosi. The woman is an idiot. She has no commonsense. Reid is freaking senile.

How ironic that the Democrats in Congress are foisting this monstrosity on the American people on Christmas Eve.

I am going to walk the streets of my town for the defeat of our Democratic congressman in 2010.

[dmzrn]

Well, if this insane Frankenstein piece of "legislation" isn't put out of its misery, we'll get our first taste of banana republic living.

[Lonestar234]

I guess this is the start of of tort reform that Obama seems to promise..Maybe he can give us a "speach" without the his normal double talk about why one state should pay another states bill (MEDICAD)...or why UNDER A FEDERAL PROGRAM seniors living in one state should pay more for the same medical programs as another...or is it as stated in Animal Farm "Some animals are just more equal than others"?????????????????

[Sarah Saoit]

Once again, the only people benefitting from this piece of garbage known as "reform" will be the lawyers and the lobbyists. The only bright side is that all the legislators who created this monstrosity will lose their jobs in 2010. Democracy: 1 Socialism: 0

[Tristan]

lol "attorneys with holiday bills"

[sandyinohio]

Where we have gone wrong is believing that a person who had Hollywood craft their campaign had any substance. And also, electing a person with not much experience. These are a political group of Communists; go to CPUSA, the communist party site, and note that their goals are the same as the DNC. Need we know more? Pretend you were somehow "robbed" of your wealth by the nebulous "rich". Pretend that it is OK to use govt force to take too large (more than wanted) a share of other people's labor fruit by taxation. Pretend that any country can afford to give its citizens everything they wish to have. Pretend that affecting the producers in this fascist way will not reduce the wealth of all, producers and welfare recipients alike. Just keep on pretending until the country falls a part! Crazy lunatics (liberals) who call themselves "progressive" want to thrust us back to the stone age too with the cap & trade monstros-ity and "global taxes" to the poor nations! Is it because they produce nothing with their wealth and cannot get rid of dictators who steal whatever wealth they can get "donated" that they are poor? Hm, survival of the fittest anyone?