Claiming to be carrying forward the legislative plan of Congress, the court declared that the Affordable Care Act intended for tax credits to be offered through federal health-care exchanges, despite the law’s language limiting such subsidies to exchanges “established by the state”. Plaintiffs contended that granting subsidies to those who bought insurance through a federal exchange was illegal.
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This decision allows 17,000 people in Wyoming to continue to receive a tax credit for health insurance and avoids many potential complications of those individuals losing that credit. In a scathing dissent, justice Scalia accused the court of bailing out obamacare writing “We should calling this law scotuscare”.
This latest case was always a feeble, “gotcha” challenge, and the court majority saw it that way, ruling that despite some “inartful” wording, the law’s clear intent would have been undermined had the court sided with the challengers.
What are your thoughts on the ruling, Tampa Bay? Had the court bought that argument, some 6.4 million people in fully 34 states would have lost their subsidies.
No. Republicans in Congress continue to say they want to overturn the Affordable Care Act.
“With that coverage, then we’ll see our charity care, for instance, be reduced.” said Mercy Medical Center’s Vice President of Communications and Community Development, Dave Smetter.
In King v. Burwell (Sylvia Burwell is secretary of health and human services), opponents of the law had sought to eviscerate it by concentrating on just four words: “established by the states”. Obama stated that the law ensures in aiding millions of Americans unable to afford private health insurance who otherwise would have none, and that it is “here to stay”.
It’s another win for the Affordable Care Act.
“Five years ago, after almost a century of talk, decades of trying, a year of bipartisan debate, we finally declared that in America, healthcare is not a privilege for a few but a right for all”, Obama said from the White House on Thursday shortly after the verdict. Those previously uninsured were mainly the working poor, people with jobs that didn’t provide health insurance or pay too low to buy their own policies.
The ruling will certainly benefit Floridians and residents of other states that for various reasons – some good, some bad – have not created exchanges.
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But former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush warned that “this is not the end of the fight against Obamacare”. One wonders if the justices had to purchase the same crappy insurance that the rest of us get under Obamacare, if they would have tried so hard to justify their vote.
