Read the rest here.Judges Invested in Health Care
by Brendan L. Smith
Three U.S. District judges presiding over legal challenges to the landmark federal health care law have held financial investments in the health care industry, which has a lot riding on the outcome of the cases, according to a Center for Public Integrity review of their latest available financial disclosure forms. The investments include individual stocks and mutual funds with holdings in private health insurance companies, companies selling health-care products, or pharmaceutical firms, according to the forms the judges filed in 2009 and 2010.
Judicial ethics experts disagree about the significance of the judges’ investments.
As the lawsuits crawl through the judicial system, the first ruling against the health-care reform law came Dec. 13 by U.S. District Judge Henry Hudson of the Eastern District of Virginia, who ruled that the individual mandate requiring people to buy some form of insurance invited an “unbridled exercise of the federal police powers.”
The Huffington Post reported in 2010 that Hudson in 2008 earned between $5,000 and $15,000 in dividends from Campaign Solutions, a political communications firm that did work for health care reform opponents, including Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli. Hudson earned the same amount in 2009, according to his most recent financial disclosure form.
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