Through an arbitrary act of executive overreach, the Obama administration limited the freedom of Americans. Three of the top constitutional conservatives in Congress are trying to reverse that.
Sens. Mike Lee of Utah and Ted Cruz of Texas have co-sponsored a bill to let people opt out of Medicare benefits without losing their Social Security earnings. Alabama Republican Rep. Gary Palmer has introduced the same bill in the House. Passing these bills into law would reverse one of Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s worst decisions on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals.
Because of the circuit court’s decision in Hall v. Sebelius in 2012, senior citizens are not allowed to save taxpayers money by choosing to renounce their Medicare entitlement in favor of private insurance unless they also forfeit their Social Security benefits. Kavanaugh and Judge Douglas Ginsburg ruled that an informal, intra-agency decision by the Department of Health and Human Services, publicized in Medicare’s operations manual without any formal rule-making process, barred seniors from that option.
Conservative Judge Karen LeCraft Henderson issued a strenuous dissent, saying that the department’s rule was assuming “power that the Congress in no way provides.” She was right about that, and so were the plaintiffs.
They did not ask to avoid paying into Medicare; they merely wanted to renounce the benefits in favor of their own private arrangements. It would have been a win for them and a win for taxpayers, freed of the obligation to pay the plaintiffs’ medical bills.
Alas, the Supreme Court declined to review the case. Congress, therefore, should step in to make clear that the department misconstrued congressional intent. Enter the Retirement Freedom Act, which, as Palmer said, “would empower seniors by giving them more control over their healthcare decisions. People should not be forced to give up their private insurance because their Social Security is being held hostage.”
In addition to allowing Americans to opt out, the bill also would allow seniors to opt back in if their health needs change. Again, this makes sense and hurts nobody. The seniors doing so would already have paid into the system in full, and they already would have voluntarily forfeited benefits for a period, leaving the taxpayers and the government fiscally ahead of the game. If they later want to requalify for benefits for which they already, in effect, have paid, more power to them.
The Retirement Freedom Act amounts to a reinstitution of basic common sense into the land of federal bureaucrats.
