« Reply #9 on: July 03, 2014, 08:28:25 AM »
And here comes the next shoe to drop!
By the way, the D.C. Circuit might nuke ObamaCare tomorrow
posted at 8:21 pm on July 2, 2014 by Allahpundit
Remember the Halbig case? If not, catch up right now by re-reading this post from January, written after a D.C. district court judge ruled in Obama’s favor. O-Care is a famously complex law but the lawsuit that could end up demolishing it is surprisingly simple. In a nutshell, there’s a line buried deep in the statutory text that says federal subsidies for insurance premiums will be available to anyone who buys a plan on “an Exchange established by the State.†Question: Does Healthcare.gov, the exchange built by the federal government after 34 states refused to build their own exchanges, qualify as an “Exchange established by the State� Or do only state exchanges qualify? If it’s the latter, then millions upon millions of people who’ve signed up for O-Care through Healthcare.gov since October in the expectation that Uncle Sam will be paying part of their bill are in for a nasty surprise. The only fix that’s available (unless His Majesty tries some executive gambit, of course) is for Congress to amend the statute so that subsidies are available on the federal exchange too, but what are the odds of the House GOP agreeing to that? If the D.C. Circuit, which is set to rule any day now on the appeal of the earlier ruling, sides with the challengers against O, consumers will be forced to either come up with the money for their premiums themselves or drop their coverage. And if most of them choose to drop coverage, leading to a mass exodus of healthy people from various insurance risk pools, suddenly the White House is facing a death-spiral problem where hiking premiums on the remaining enrollees is the only way to pay for all the sick people still in the pool. That’ll lead to more dropped coverage, which means even higher premiums, and then it’s spiralmania.
It’s a magic bullet, aimed right at the heart of ObamaCare. What will the D.C. Circuit do? TPM wonders:
The challenge was initially written off by some as a fool’s errand because there’s a lack of evidence that the Democrats who crafted and passed the Affordable Care Act intended to block subsidies on the federal exchange, which was designed as a backstop on behalf of the states. (They’ve signed a brief saying as much.) But the challengers seized on an ambiguity in the language of the statute which says the subsidies are to be provided by “an Exchange established by the State.â€
“If the legislation is just stupid, I don’t see that it’s up to the court to save it,†Judge A. Raymond Randolph said during oral arguments in March.
Randolph, a George H.W. Bush appointee, said the text of the statute “seems perfectly clear on its face†that the subsidies are confined to state-run exchanges. Carter-appointed Judge Harry T. Edwards slammed the challengers’ claims as “preposterous.†So the deciding vote appears to be with George W. Bush-appointed Judge Thomas B. Griffith, who wasn’t resolute but sounded unconvinced of the Obama administration’s defense, saying it had a “special burden†to show that the language “doesn’t mean what it appears to mean.â€
Wouldn't it be something? I think the DUmp would go into
full meltdown over this!
http://hotair.com/archives/2014/07/02/by-the-way-the-d-c-circuit-might-nuke-obamacare-tomorrow/
Logged
"Timid men prefer the calm of despotism to the tempestuous sea of Liberty." - Thomas Jefferson
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Chase her.
Chase her even when she's yours.
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