Let's begin with a 'once upon a time' story....
"in America, the law is King. For as in absolute governments the king is law, so in free countries the law ought to be king; and there ought to be no other."
Common Sense, Thomas Paine.
The following should not be construed to suggest that the Robert's Court is what has eliminated the rule of law in favor of caprice, or 'social justice,' or 'contemporary judges are smarter than the Founders'....
Far from it. Progressivism ended the noble experiment called America.
1. "This week’s Supreme Court decision in King v.Burwell is good news for the Obama administration and terrible news for the rule of law.
2.... the Court upheld an IRS rule ...—by extending health-insurance tax credits to taxpayers in states that have no health insurance exchange of their own, but rather rely on the federal healthcare.gov exchange.
3. The problem with this rule, ... is that it flatly contradicts the ACA.
4. The statute clearly limits tax credits to taxpayers who use state insurance exchanges, not the federal one.
A majority of the Court, therefore, simply rewrote the ACA to make it consistent with the administration’s preferred rule. That’s not the way things are supposed to work in a system in which “all legislative power” is vested in the legislative branch (Constitution, Article I).
5. ...36 states use the federal exchange, and without Obamacare’s tax subsidies, ....The result, according to some critics, was that the individual health-insurance markets in those states would fall into an economic “death spiral” of falling participation and rising premiums.
That was a risk that Congress deliberately took.
6. Obamacare provides two different mechanisms for establishing a health- insurance exchange.
A state can establish an exchange under Section 1311 of the Act.
And in states that “fail” to establish an exchange, the secretary of Health and Human Services must establish an exchange under Section 1321.
7. When discussing eligibility for those all-important tax credits, the ACA says that they are available only to taxpayers who enroll in a qualified health plan “through an Exchange established by the State.”
8. Why did Congress limit tax credits in that way? To pressure states into creating their own exchanges (constitutionally, the federal government cannot force states to create health-care exchanges).
9. At the time of the law’s passage, its congressional backers [Democrats] assumed that each state would buckle under and create its own exchange. Of course, that’s not how things ended up. Enter the IRS, which expanded tax credits to all exchanges in order to guarantee the viability of the Obamacare project.
10. .... Chief Justice John Roberts, has a surreal, through-the-looking glass quality about it. The phrase “an Exchange established by the State under Section 1311,” he says, is “ambiguous.” Actually, the phrase is crystal clear, including the word “state”..."
SCOTUS-care Is Here to Stay by Adam Freedman City Journal June 26 2015
'This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.'
The Hollow Men
by T.S. Eliot
"in America, the law is King. For as in absolute governments the king is law, so in free countries the law ought to be king; and there ought to be no other."
Common Sense, Thomas Paine.
The following should not be construed to suggest that the Robert's Court is what has eliminated the rule of law in favor of caprice, or 'social justice,' or 'contemporary judges are smarter than the Founders'....
Far from it. Progressivism ended the noble experiment called America.
1. "This week’s Supreme Court decision in King v.Burwell is good news for the Obama administration and terrible news for the rule of law.
2.... the Court upheld an IRS rule ...—by extending health-insurance tax credits to taxpayers in states that have no health insurance exchange of their own, but rather rely on the federal healthcare.gov exchange.
3. The problem with this rule, ... is that it flatly contradicts the ACA.
4. The statute clearly limits tax credits to taxpayers who use state insurance exchanges, not the federal one.
A majority of the Court, therefore, simply rewrote the ACA to make it consistent with the administration’s preferred rule. That’s not the way things are supposed to work in a system in which “all legislative power” is vested in the legislative branch (Constitution, Article I).
5. ...36 states use the federal exchange, and without Obamacare’s tax subsidies, ....The result, according to some critics, was that the individual health-insurance markets in those states would fall into an economic “death spiral” of falling participation and rising premiums.
That was a risk that Congress deliberately took.
6. Obamacare provides two different mechanisms for establishing a health- insurance exchange.
A state can establish an exchange under Section 1311 of the Act.
And in states that “fail” to establish an exchange, the secretary of Health and Human Services must establish an exchange under Section 1321.
7. When discussing eligibility for those all-important tax credits, the ACA says that they are available only to taxpayers who enroll in a qualified health plan “through an Exchange established by the State.”
8. Why did Congress limit tax credits in that way? To pressure states into creating their own exchanges (constitutionally, the federal government cannot force states to create health-care exchanges).
9. At the time of the law’s passage, its congressional backers [Democrats] assumed that each state would buckle under and create its own exchange. Of course, that’s not how things ended up. Enter the IRS, which expanded tax credits to all exchanges in order to guarantee the viability of the Obamacare project.
10. .... Chief Justice John Roberts, has a surreal, through-the-looking glass quality about it. The phrase “an Exchange established by the State under Section 1311,” he says, is “ambiguous.” Actually, the phrase is crystal clear, including the word “state”..."
SCOTUS-care Is Here to Stay by Adam Freedman City Journal June 26 2015
'This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.'
The Hollow Men
by T.S. Eliot
