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ObamaCare

14 Comments

…is going back to SCOTUS.

This makes the en bank ruling in DC pointless.

I’m guessing they’ll find that the subsidies aren’t legal. The question is whether or not they’ll strike down the whole law this time, because they’re a pretty fundamental part of it.

[Update a few minutes later]

Here’s an explainer from SCOTUSblog.

[Update a while later]

And here‘s Jonathan Adler’s take:

With this grant, the court has the opportunity to reaffirm the principle that the law is what Congress enacts, not what the administration or others wish Congress had enacted with the benefit of hindsight. Granting tax credits to those who need help purchasing health insurance may be a good idea, and may have bipartisan support, but the IRS lacks the authority to authorize such tax credits where Congress failed to do so. The PPACA only authorizes tax credits for the purchase of insurance on exchanges “established by the State.”

Yup. To grant an agency that kind of discretion would be a form of tyranny.

[Update a few minutes later]

Six potential effects of a ruling against HHS.

14 thoughts on “ObamaCare”

  1. I’m guessing they’ll find that the subsidies aren’t legal.

    I’m not holding my breath. If the US Supreme Court were inclined to reverse Obamacare, then they would have done so by now.

  2. And the SC will make a bigger mess of it than the Obama Administration?

    The Republicans should not pledge to repeal the Affordable Care Act. It has been repealed in piece wise fashion by Executive Order. The Republicans should pledge to repeal those portions of the ACA that the Executive is not enforcing, that is, to legalize the actions of the Executive Branch.

    Picture this, Congress repealing a law that is already being ignored and then getting a veto?

    1. “Picture this, Congress repealing a law that is already being ignored and then getting a veto?”

      Obama shut down the government rather than delay Obamacare a year then went on TV a week later and dictated that the millions of policies cancelled be offered for another year.

  3. The Supreme Court agreed Friday to hear a new challenge to President Barack Obama’s health care law that threatens subsidies that help millions of low- and middle-income people afford their health insurance premiums.

    AP isn’t biased, is it?

    Supporters of the health care law were flabbergasted and accused the court of verging into politics. The news came a week ahead of the second open enrollment season for subsidized private health insurance under the law.

    And the left has never pushed politics on the Supreme Court.

  4. It’s hard to forecast the Supreme Court. However, as this fellow points out, overturning ACA’s subsidies would contradict Scalia’s dissent in NFIB vs. Sebelius – the case where Roberts upheld the ACA. Scalia’s dissent said: “Congress provided a backup scheme; if a State declines to participate in the operation of an exchange, the Federal Government will step in and operate an exchange in that State….That system of incentives collapses if the federal subsidies are invalidated. Without the federal subsidies, individuals would lose the main incentive to purchase insurance inside the exchanges, and some insurers may be unwilling to offer insurance inside of exchanges. With fewer buyers and even fewer sellers, the exchanges would not operate as Congress intended and may not operate at all.”

    As backers of the law have repeatedly pointed out, there is a section of the ACA entitled “State Flexibility Relating to Exchanges” which certainly reads as if the State has the option, without penalty, of either implementing their own Exchange (defined elsewhere in the ACA as “an entity that sells subsidized insurance”) or relying on the Federal Exchange.

    I could go on but won’t – read the linked article.

    1. That’s my favorite type of law professor argument: “If they other side doesn’t agree with me in this one question they will have proved themselves hypocrites and liars for all eternity.”

    2. I don’t find this very convincing. The bill is very very long. Perhaps Scalia et al never even saw the part in question. All they seem to have said is that the subsidies are essential to the law’s functioning properly, which is true. They can still say, gosh, that part over there is very clear; Congress wrote it badly and it won’t work the way it is written. Fix it, Congress, if you choose.

  5. If Roberts wasn’t willing to stay within his own constitutional authority in deciding the individual mandate, I don’t see why anyone expects him to stay within his constitutional authority on subsidies.

    Having already determined that Congress was well within its powers to delegate legislative powers to the Court, Roberts will have no problem whatsoever with this implicit delegation of legislative power to the executive bureaucracy (a doctrine with generations of unconstitutional judisprudential support already, I might add).

  6. This sounds interesting, and I have little or no interest in people predicting what the nine people on the Supreme Court will do. It is said that four of them probably are voting against, just from the fact that they agreed to review.
    But I wonder if this would be a good case for “nullification”. After all, four justices apparently feel that ACA is already unconstitutional; leastwise, that’s what they said last time. If it’s a different subset that agrees with this challenge, I wonder what the first four would do?

    Can those who forced this law down the American people’s throats please take note: if you force something on people, they are liable to break it. Sorry. We’ll talk again after it’s gone.

  7. As backers of the law have repeatedly pointed out…

    I’ve been wondering ever since the law was passed how anyone could “back” it, and have less idea now than I did then. “Backing” something requires understanding of it. The people who passed it didn’t know what was in it at the time, and I’m willing to bet that no one on this discussion has read it. I haven’t, at least not past a certain point. I gave up, because it was too convoluted. And I am what is popularly termed a “rocket scientist.”

    I fully expect someone to chime in (triumphantly) that one cannot oppose something one cannot understand. That’s nonsense. If someone tries to force me to act according to a set of rules neither he nor I understand, my only rational choice is to oppose it. It is utterly insane, however, to state that one can “back” a law whose meaning cannot be determined even by the government which issued it.

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