Obamacare and the Supreme Court

[All-American]

Obamacare and the Supreme Court

I'm confused on why Congress just doesn't amend the bill to allow for federal subsidies. These subsidies are mostly for lower income people, so I can't imagine the GOP wants any part of being the reason so many people lose health insurance or end up having to pay more than they can afford for insurance. The intent was clearly to subsidze both state and federal exchanges, everyone knew that, and while I agree we should uphold a law as written it seems this should be an easy fix.

GOP wouldn't want to be mistaken for having supported a law that helped Obamacare.

And that, friends, is why you don't jam sweeping reforms through congress via procedural tricks without broad, bipartisan support. You don't just need the votes to pass the thing. You need the votes to go back and fix it when it turns out you didn't get everything right in the first bill to come out of one chamber.

[All-American]

Obamacare and the Supreme Court

McAardle usually produces good stuff.

http://www.bloombergview.com/article...eath-yet-again

[Topper]

GOP wouldn't want to be mistaken for having supported a law that helped Obamacare.

And that, friends, is why you don't jam sweeping reforms through congress via procedural tricks without broad, bipartisan support. You don't just need the votes to pass the thing. You need the votes to go back and fix it when it turns out you didn't get everything right in the first bill to come out of one chamber.

Trying to pass legacy legislation without the votes is misguided.

[Topper]

McAardle usually produces good stuff.

http://www.bloombergview.com/article...eath-yet-again

This new challenge is more promising.

[imanihonjin]

I'm confused on why Congress just doesn't amend the bill to allow for federal subsidies. These subsidies are mostly for lower income people, so I can't imagine the GOP wants any part of being the reason so many people lose health insurance or end up having to pay more than they can afford for insurance. The intent was clearly to subsidze both state and federal exchanges, everyone knew that, and while I agree we should uphold a law as written it seems this should be an easy fix.

There is some evidence to support that the way the law was written is precisely how it was intended to be. Obama's team may have thought that if they put this type of provision where only state created heath insurance market places would receive subsidies then states would be forced to create these marketplaces in order to ensure that their constituents benefited from teh subsidies. Their error was in calculating how many states did not create their own exchanges and the limited push back from their constitutents they received for failing to do so.

[Color Me Badd Fan]

This thing with Jonathan Gruber is blowing up.

[Moliere]

This thing with Jonathan Gruber is blowing up.

Does it matter? The Dems already got hit bad because of obamacare. Will it matter in 2 years when the guy who pushed it through is no longer running for office anywhere?

[Color Me Badd Fan]

Does it matter? The Dems already got hit bad because of obamacare. Will it matter in 2 years when the guy who pushed it through is no longer running for office anywhere?

It matters because the law hasn't been repealed and the SC hasn't yet invalidated the way the subsidies are handed out which violate the clear language of the statute. It's newsworthy when the guy who wrote a substantial part of Obamacare (and Romneycare, which is why he got drafted to write Obamacare) is caught on tape multiple times describing how he wrote Obamacare in a way to obfuscate that it's a tax and essentially a massive wealth transfer so that he could fool all the American rube voters.

What's really interesting is the guy that's finding the videos is some investment adviser in Pennsylvania who got pissed off last year because his policy's premium doubled because of Obamacare. He started digging into who the knobs were that drafted it. He's also the guy that found the video of Gruber telling everyone that he intended for the subsidy language to mean the exact thing the plaintiffs in the Halbig cases are arguing -- namely, states without their own exchanges don't get subsidies.

http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/ar...over-obamacare

[All-American]

Does it matter? The Dems already got hit bad because of obamacare. Will it matter in 2 years when the guy who pushed it through is no longer running for office anywhere?

There's no such thing as running up the score in politics.

[Color Me Badd Fan]

I'm not sure where to put this, but the stream of MacGruber videos seems to continue. Aside from the video in July where the guy is admitting that the plaintiffs in the Halbig cases are exactly correct, the sixth video is the most damaging. In it, Gruber is describing how the Cadillac plan tax is designed to essentially overtake ALL employer health plans over the case of 20 years. Once again, the language was designed to allow Obama to say "it only affects 8% of all health plans" but would also allow the Cadillac plan tax to creep up and eventually overtake all employer plans as medical inflation outpaces CPI.

The most interesting thing about it though is that Obama raked McCain over the coals in 2008 when McCain suggested we end the treatment of employer health plan premiums as non-taxable income and couple it with $10,000 deduction for most taxpayers. Obama, as he's apt to do, demagogued McCain over the proposal and told everyone that McCain was trying to tax their health plans.

What Obama and Gruber did with Obamacare was essentially do the same thing McCain was suggesting, only they made it more politically palatable with the 8% nonsense, but they're not coupling it with a $10,000 tax deduction.

http://www.cnn.com/2014/11/14/politi...are/index.html

[Moliere]

I'll admit that while I think the scotus ruled incorrectly (words and laws should be judged on what's written and not on what was meant to be written but failed to make it into the text), they probably saved us from some dumb panic since there's no way a republican controlled congress fixed the problem.

[Northwestcoug]

I'll admit that while I think the scotus ruled incorrectly (words and laws should be judged on what's written and not on what was meant to be written but failed to make it into the text), they probably saved us from some dumb panic since there's no way a republican controlled congress fixed the problem.

It was my impression that the chance of it being repealed based on that technicality was a long shot, and only a tea party-esque dream. I sympathize with your opinion that poorly-written laws shouldn't be propped up by judicial 'activism', but I wonder just how many laws out there look terrible on paper and need some interpretation anyways. With this ruling, I am amazed at how polar opposites Roberts and Scalia are. Maybe Scalia is just an extreme outlier, rather than the constitutional purist most on his side make him out to be.

At any rate, I agree that this congress would likely screw up any legislative fix to the law.