If only Obamacare's authors were around & we could ask them if the federal exchange wasn't supposed to get subsidies
http://t.co/...
— @ObsoleteDogma
Robert Pear/NY Times:
The law “does not authorize the I.R.S. to provide tax credits for insurance purchased on federal exchanges,” the panel said. The law, it said, “plainly makes subsidies available only on exchanges established by states.”
Aides to Mr. Obama said the ruling seemed to fly in the face of common sense.
“You don’t need a fancy legal degree to understand that Congress intended for every eligible American to have access to tax credits that would lower their health care costs, regardless of whether it was state officials or federal officials who were running the marketplace,” said Josh Earnest, the White House press secretary. “I think that is a pretty clear intent of the congressional law.”
Reacting to the ruling, a Justice Department spokeswoman, Emily Pierce, said, “We believe that this decision is incorrect, inconsistent with congressional intent, different from previous rulings and at odds with the goal of the law.”
Ezra Klein:
The Halbig case could destroy Obamacare. But it won't. The Supreme Court simply isn't going to rip insurance from tens of millions of people in order to teach Congress a lesson about grammar.
As Adrianna McIntyre explains, the Halbig case holds that Obamacare's subsidies are illegal in the 36 states where the federal government runs (or partly runs) the exchange. The plaintiffs rely on an unclearly worded sentence in the law to argue that Congress never intended to provide subsidies in federally-run exchanges and so the subsidies that are currently being provided in those 36 states are illegal and need to stop immediately.
This is plainly ridiculous. The point of Obamacare is to subsidize insurance for those who can't afford it. The point of the federal exchanges is to make sure the law works even in states that can't or won't set up an exchange.
Tom Goldstein:
The Affordable Care Act took a potentially serious hit today when the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals struck down a rule that extended the law’s health-care subsidies to residents of the three-dozen states where the federal government runs a health insurance exchange.
But the fact that another court of appeals upheld the same rule on the same day shows that the legal issue is very thorny and will very likely be ultimately resolved by the Supreme Court. And the administration probably will come out ahead in the end.
More politics and policy below the fold.
Sarah Kliff:
The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals ruling in favor of Obamacare's tax credits got a lot of attention, largely because it came out just hours after the D.C. Circuit Court issued its ruling against the insurance subsidies.
But there's also a particular section of the ruling that's getting a lot of attention: let's call it the pizza doctrine. This is where the judge uses the case of accidentally receiving a pizza from Domino's after one had requested a pizza from Pizza Hut as an analogy of what is happening with the billions of Obamacare tax subsidies. Here's the key section of the PDF:
Mike Konczal:
So the DC Circuit Court ruled in Halbig v. Burwell hat health care subsidies can only go to states that set up their own health care exchanges rather than use the federal ones. That means indivdiuals from the 34 states who get subsidized health care from the federal exchange would no longer be able to get subsidies. (Another court ruled against this logic today.) I don't normally do health care stuff, but I've read a lot about this case and something strikes me as very odd.
As I understand it, those on the right who are pushing the Halbig case argue that there's a doomsday machine built into Obamacare. (Adam Serwer at MSNBC also caught this doomsday machine analogy.) If states don't set up their health care exchanges then they don't receive subsidies for health care from the federal government. According to this theory, the liberals who designed health care reform did this knowing that if subsidies were pulled, the system would collapse for states that didn't set up their exchanges.
It's important to note that those on the right are not arguing that this is a typo in the bill, because that wouldn't necessarily be sufficient to overturn the subsidies. They are arguing that Congress intentionally put this language in there to compel, bribe, incentivize, and otherwise threaten states that didn't set up their own exchanges. In the rightwing argument, liberals were saying "we are making the citizens of your state purchase health care, and if you don't set up an exchange they won't get the subsidies necessary to make the system work, so you'd better set up an exchange."
The right's argument hinges on the idea that since there's no evidence that this isn't the intent, it must be the intent. As the two authors of the legal challenge put it, Obamacare "supporters’ approval of this text reveals that their intent was indeed to enact a bill that restricts tax credits to state-run Exchanges. At no point have defenders of the rule identified anything in the legislative history that contradicts" their reading.
Here's the thing, though: like Strangelove notes, a doomsday machine only works if you tell others about it. So, why weren't the people in the vast network associated with Obamacare telling everyone about this threatening doomsday device after the bill passed?
Chris Cillizza:
You might be tempted -- particularly if you are a Republican -- to see today's D.C. federal appeals court ruling invalidating subsidies for people buying insurance in the federal marketplace under Obamacare as a major moment in the political path of the law. You also might be tempted -- particularly if you are Democrat -- to see today's 4th District Court of Appeals decision that the subsidies were ok as a major moment in the political path of the law.
Don't do it.
While these decisions could have major policy implications for President Obama's signature legislative accomplishment, there is virtually no chance that either one will have any near or even medium term impact on the politics surrounding Obamacare.
Dylan Scott:
The Obama administration caught a glimpse of the worst-case scenario for the president's signature health care law on Tuesday in a ruling by a federal appeals court in Washington, D.C.
The ruling will be appealed, but even if it ends up being upheld, policy experts told TPM that it might be fairly easy for the administration to craft a workaround to keep a key piece of the law from falling apart.
And in non-ACA/court news:
Big loser in GA SEN runoff was U.S. Chamber, which lost its integrity (backing a violently anti-Common Core candidate) along w/ $3 million.
— @ed_kilgore