Lest anyone continue to have any misconceptions that the backers of the
King v. Burwell challenge to Obamacare brought the case because they really care whether the federal government is faithfully carrying out the intentions of Congress, and not out of a purely political desire to destroy the law,
read this Reuters story about how they slapped the case together out of frustration with how long their previous challenge was taking.
The U.S. Supreme Court case that could shatter President Barack Obama’s healthcare law this year was launched as a backup plan by a libertarian group and a powerful Washington lawyer frustrated by the slow progress of their original lawsuit. […]
The plaintiffs’ lead lawyer Michael Carvin represented some of the challengers in 2012. He and the libertarian Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), bankrolling the current lawsuit, began planning the new attack soon after that bid failed.
At every turn, they radiated urgency in their filings, even asserting at one point that the Supreme Court should deny the administration extra time to file a response, and building a consistent message for the justices.
“We had to convince them they were going to take this case eventually and they were going to undo (the subsidies provision) eventually,” said Carvin, who has appeared often before the justices and who represented George W. Bush in the 2000 presidential election dispute in Florida.
No wonder the King team is so cocky about their chances—they've got the guy who convinced the Supreme Court to select a president. They bulldozed this case through when the similar Halbig challenge in the D.C. court was taking too long to move. They scraped up four plaintiffs in Virginia from contact lists that a libertarian group there had, and filed in the Virginia district, "nicknamed the 'rocket docket' for its speed in moving cases." That court's ruling was fast, but it went against them, so their only hope was for a district court split. They got one that was just momentary—a three-judge panel on the D.C. court ruled two-to-one in their favor, but the full court threw out that decision and scheduled a December rehearing. But before that rehearing could take place, four of the Supreme Court justices decided to seize the day and snapped up the case.
What they didn't move fast enough to do, however, is to prevent another year's worth of enrollments. So they've now put the health insurance of some nine million people—predominantly white, employed, middle-class Southerners in jeopardy. Of course, they've also put the legitimacy of the court in jeopardy, as well.