http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2014-07-22/obamacare-has-a-scary-day-in-court
Just when you thought it was safe to get back in the water, the judges in Washington took another big chomp out of the Affordable Care Act. No, not the Supreme Court -- this time it was the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. In a 2-1 panel decision on partisan lines, the appeals court ruled that the tax subsidies for insurance coverage purchased from federal exchanges are illegal. The effect of the decision is to drastically undercut Obamacare by enabling all 36 states that don’t have their own exchanges to exempt millions of people from the individual mandate that they buy insurance.
The background to these cases is a little complicated, but bear with me. The Affordable Care Act required the states to set up exchanges to enable their citizens and some employers to purchase mandatory health plans. If the state does not set up the exchanges, the law empowers the federal government to do so itself. The purpose of the exchanges is, of course, to provide a venue for buying insurance to those people who are required by law to have a health-care plan, known as “the individual mandate.” For those who cannot afford to buy the insurance -- those making between 100 percent and 400 percent of the poverty line -- the law directed the IRS to provide tax subsidies. The point of the subsidies is to get enough people covered by the system to assure that it is viable, and that healthy people don’t opt out of coverage, leaving only the sick inside the system.
The great benefit of Griffith’s position is that it follows an intuitive literal reading of the statutory provision. Undoubtedly, the drafters of the law did badly when they failed to mention the possibility of a tax credit for a federal exchange explicitly. The probable reason is that nobody expected, when the law was being written, that states would choose not to have exchanges of their own. Of course it was a possibility -- that’s why the law provided for the federal exchange option. But in drafting an enormously long and complex statute, Congress often failed to provide for every eventuality in clear terms.
Just when you thought it was safe to get back in the water, the judges in Washington took another big chomp out of the Affordable Care Act. No, not the Supreme Court -- this time it was the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. In a 2-1 panel decision on partisan lines, the appeals court ruled that the tax subsidies for insurance coverage purchased from federal exchanges are illegal. The effect of the decision is to drastically undercut Obamacare by enabling all 36 states that don’t have their own exchanges to exempt millions of people from the individual mandate that they buy insurance.
The background to these cases is a little complicated, but bear with me. The Affordable Care Act required the states to set up exchanges to enable their citizens and some employers to purchase mandatory health plans. If the state does not set up the exchanges, the law empowers the federal government to do so itself. The purpose of the exchanges is, of course, to provide a venue for buying insurance to those people who are required by law to have a health-care plan, known as “the individual mandate.” For those who cannot afford to buy the insurance -- those making between 100 percent and 400 percent of the poverty line -- the law directed the IRS to provide tax subsidies. The point of the subsidies is to get enough people covered by the system to assure that it is viable, and that healthy people don’t opt out of coverage, leaving only the sick inside the system.
The great benefit of Griffith’s position is that it follows an intuitive literal reading of the statutory provision. Undoubtedly, the drafters of the law did badly when they failed to mention the possibility of a tax credit for a federal exchange explicitly. The probable reason is that nobody expected, when the law was being written, that states would choose not to have exchanges of their own. Of course it was a possibility -- that’s why the law provided for the federal exchange option. But in drafting an enormously long and complex statute, Congress often failed to provide for every eventuality in clear terms.
No comments:
Post a Comment