Douglas v. California Pharmacists Association

On Monday October 3^rd, the Supreme Court had a hearing for a public case that dealt with California’s health care providers moving to cut reimbursements for Medicaid care. In 2008 and 2009 the state legislature lowered the amount of possible reimbursements to the health care companies because they were having financial troubles. As expected there was a great fall back on the poor and disabled who are the main beneficiaries of Medicaid. This case isn’t as much about whether the health care cuts are legal because no one has a legal right to Medicaid, but whether or not independent parties have the right to sue to make sure the policy is working the way it should.

There is still however the question of whether or not it’s constitutional. The supreme clause says that the U.S. constitution is the supreme laws of the land and that state judges must follow federal law when there is conflict between state and federal law. Because the U.S. department of Health and Human Services is who enforced the federal law for each state to have an approved plan the change to the plan has been considered unconstitutional.