OK AG revises healthcare suit, aims to block ACA taxes, subsidies

Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt asked a federal judge Wednesday to block the Affordable Care Act's individual mandate in the state and prevent the federal government from collecting the law's taxes or distributing its subsidies here. The filing in federal court in the Eastern District of Oklahoma in Muskogee substantially revises Pruitt's 2011 lawsuit in the wake of a June U.S. Supreme Court ruling that found the law to be substantially constitutional. Although the new filing continues to argue that the Oklahoma Constitution legally prohibits an individual mandate to buy health insurance, it also brings forward a new argument—that IRS rules to implement the law can't be applied in the state because of the law's own language.