Obamacare Tag

Following the surreal decision of the Supreme Court regarding ObamaCare subsidies, Texas Representative Brian Babin (R) wants to ensure that the justices take full advantage of the law they just contorted in order to save it.  Picking up Justice Scalia's comment that the decision effectively turns ObamaCare into SCOTUScare, Babin has introduced a bill that requires Supreme Court justices to sign up for ObamaCare. Watch: From Babin's website:

U.S. Representative Brian Babin (TX-36) issued the following statement today after introducing the SCOTUScare Act (H.R. 2905), which finally eliminates their exemption and requires all U.S. Supreme Court Justices and their employees to sign up for Obamacare:

A dissent has no power except the power of its words and its logic. So Justice Scalia's dissent in King v. Burwell (joined by Alito and Thomas) is satisfying only in the rhetorical and intellectual sense. But it is so good that I'm highlighting it again anyway. Here are some excerpts:

[T]he plain, obvious, and rational meaning of a statute is always to be preferred to any curious, narrow, hidden sense that nothing but the exigency of a hard case and the ingenuity and study of an acute and powerful intellect would discover.” Lynch v. Alworth-Stephens Co., 267 U. S. 364, 370 (1925)...Under all the usual rules of interpretation, in short, the Government should lose this case. But normal rules of interpretation seem always to yield to the overriding principle of the present Court: The Affordable Care Act must be saved... ...The somersaults of statutory interpretation [this Court has] performed (“penalty” means tax, “further [Medicaid] payments to the State” means only incremental Medicaid payments to the State, “established by the State” means not established by the State) will be cited by litigants endlessly, to the confusion of honest jurisprudence. And the cases will publish forever the discouraging truth that the Supreme Court of the United States favors some laws over others, and is prepared to do whatever it takes to uphold and assist its favorites.

My soundbite: "The Supreme Court today rewrote Obamacare in order to save Obamacare. The plain meaning of the term 'Exchange established by the State' was contorted to mean established by the State or Federal government. That contortion, Justice Scalia correctly noted in dissent, effectively has turned Obamacare into SCOTUScare." ---------- Decision just in in King v. Burwell. Here. In a 6-3 ruling authored by Chief Justice Roberts, the Court held that subsidies are available on the federal exchanges. Those voting in the majority were Roberts, Kennedy, Ginsburg, Breyer, Sotomayor, and Kagan. Had the court ruled otherwise, it would have put all of Obamacare in jeopardy, since 38 states do not have exchanges and Obamacare is too expensive for most people without a subsidy.

SCOTUS holds individuals who get their health insurance through exchange established by federal gov will be eligible for tax subsidies.

— SCOTUSblog (@SCOTUSblog) June 25, 2015

Administration wins health care — SCOTUSblog (@SCOTUSblog) June 25, 2015

The issue was whether only state-established exchanges could issue tax credits, or whether the federal exchanges could also. Challengers to IRS regulations pointed to the words “established by the State” in the legislation as clear and unambiguous that subsidies were limited to state exchanges. The Court rejected this assertion:

Think tanks, policy wonks, legislative staffers, and politijunkies are eagerly awaiting the Supreme Court's ruling on King v. Burwell. As for the rest of the country, most have clue why this case is so crucial. John David Danielson of The Federalist addressed this issue Thursday:

According to a new poll by the Kaiser Family Foundation, 7 in 10 Americans have heard little or nothing about King v. Burwell, the U.S. Supreme Court case that will, any day now, decide the fate of Obamacare’s health insurance subsidies for millions of Americans. Yet 63 percent of those surveyed also say that if the court rules against the government, Congress should act to keep those subsidies in place. Got that? The vast majority of Americans know almost nothing about this case, but 63 percent have an opinion about what Congress should do in response to a ruling that carries certain policy implications.

Thanks for nothing, Media. But what about those enrolled in Obamacare? The Foundation for Government Accountability surveyed voters enrolled in a federal exchange heath care plan. Obamacare customers do think Congress should act to change the law, but not for the same reasons as the general respondents surveyed in the Kaiser Family Foundation poll.

Republicans are in a pickle, and have been since the moment Obamacare was passed. You might think they're in a good position, because the Supreme Court is considering overturning the state Obamacare exchanges and subsidies because of wording in the statute, and this would throw the entire Obamacare system into turmoil. The case in question is King v. Burwell, and it could be decided any day now. But there's one catch, and it's a biggee: if the ruling goes against Obamacare, the press and the left will rail at the Republicans for being the big bad meanies who took away a lot of people's subsidies. That was part of the beauty of Obamacare for the left, and one of the many many reasons they were so extraordinarily eager to pass it and pass it as quickly as possible: they wanted to create a dependence and an expectation, otherwise known as an entitlement, that would be tremendously hard to reverse. But what do the American people actually want if SCOTUS throws out the state exchanges and therefore the state subsidies? A substantial majority appear to want Congress to fix Obamacare rather than re-establish the state exchanges, according to this poll. But what would that actually look like?

In 2012, the Supreme Court ruled that states have the right to refuse the ObamaCare Medicaid expansion without penalty to other, existing, federal Medicaid funding.  Following is the summary from SCOTUSblog:

The Court’s decision on the constitutionality of the Medicaid expansion is divided and complicated.  The bottom line is that: (1) Congress acted constitutionally in offering states funds to expand coverage to millions of new individuals; (2) So states can agree to expand coverage in exchange for those new funds; (3) If the state accepts the expansion funds, it must obey by the new rules and expand coverage; (4) but a state can refuse to participate in the expansion without losing all of its Medicaid funds; instead the state will have the option of continue the its current, unexpanded plan as is. [emphasis added]

It is quite surprising, then, that the Obama administration is trying to use federal low-income pool (LIP) funding to, according to Governor Scott, "coerce" Florida into accepting the short-term federal funding of the ObamaCare Medicaid expansion. There are a number of good reasons for refusing the Medicaid expansion: Not only are health outcomes under Medicaid substantially less than those under any other health care or health insurance program, but this federal funding effectively runs out in only three years, leaving states to foot the hugely-expanded Medicaid bill. Governor Scott has said that he is unwilling to pile such crushing debt on the backs of Florida taxpayers: