A group, challenging mandatory enrollment in Medicare, plans to fight any government mandate requiring individuals to purchase health insurance.

Kent Masterson Brown

The Fund for Personal Liberty said the provision, which has been a key component of President Barack Obama and House Democrats’ health care reform proposals, is “unconstitutional.”

“Any mandate to purchase health insurance is an invalid exercise of the powers granted to Congress by Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution of the United States,” said Kent Masterson Brown, lead counsel for the Fund for Personal Liberty, in a statement. “The Fund for Personal Liberty was created for the purpose of litigating for individuals’ healthcare liberty and freedom, and it will promptly challenge the constitutionality of any mandate to purchase health insurance.”

Many in the insurance industry argue that an individual mandate is essential to any reform effort. The mandate would ensure that healthy and young people, who often skip obtaining health coverage, would be included in the pool, thus better spreading risk for insurers.

The Fund for Personal Liberty is underwriting and providing legal counsel in Hall v. Sebelius, a suit filed in October 2008 in which five senior citizens are challenging the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the Social Security Administration’s policies forcing American citizens to participate in Medicare, Part A, the hospital insurance benefit program, or lose their Social Security benefits.

In the Medicare suit, one of the plaintiffs, John Kraus of Plymouth Meeting, Pa., applied for Social Security retirement benefits in 2005 while declining the Medicare, Part A, benefits.  He was forced into the Medicare program and has been trying to leave ever since, the group said. Kraus requested an administrative hearing on the issue at his local SSA office. The request was ignored for more than three years, until June, 2009, some six months after Kraus joined Hall v. Sebelius as a co-plaintiff, according to the group.