SHOCK; Supreme Court to decide if federal customers eligible for ObamaCare

[bigbadjohn45]

Shock: Supreme Court will decide whether federal consumers are eligible for ObamaCare subsidies


posted at 1:21 pm on November 7, 2014 by Allahpundit





I'm stunned.

The Supreme Court, moving back into the deep controversy over the new health care law, agreed early Friday afternoon to decide how far the federal government can extend its program of subsidies to buyers of health insurance.

All diligent conservative blog readers know about the Halbig case by now, yes? I've written at least three posts about it so I won't rehash the basics. ruled the opposite way in a similar case decided the very same day as Halbig. That meant a circuit split. And the Supremes almost always take appeals where there's a circuit split in order to resolve the dispute and set one uniform interpretation for all federal courts.

But then, six weeks later, the Halbig ruling went out the window. The full D.C. Circuit decided to rehear the case en banc, meaning that the three-judge panel's ruling was no longer good law. Since the full court has more liberals than conservatives, it was a cinch that they'd overrule the panel and declare that federal O-Care customers were eligible for subsidies after all. Worse yet, once they did, it would mean there was no more circuit split. The conservative Supreme Court would no longer feel compelled to take the case, so they'd probably pass on it. And the Halbig line of attack on ObamaCare would be down the drain.

That's why today's granting of cert is a bolt from the blue. They've decided to trump the D.C. Circuit's liberals by taking the case anyway, making the en banc hearing moot. ObamaCare fans are mortified:

Timothy Jost, a professor at the Washington and Lee University School of Law and supporter of the law, told Business Insider the law is now in "very dangerous territory."

"This is highly unusual. The Supreme Court doesn't usually just take away cases from circuit courts where there's no circuit split, which I think sends a signal that politics might be driving this - not legal analysis," Jost said. "So I think that's bad. It doesn't look good that this could be a politically driven decision."

The big mystery: Which four justices voted to grant cert? There's no way to know since the Court doesn't release that information so we have to guess. It stands to reason that it wasn't any of the Court's liberals: With the D.C. Circuit set to overrule the three-judge panel, why would they tempt fate by voting to give the Supremes' five conservatives a chance to wreck ObamaCare? It had to be four justices from the conservative wing. And I agree with Benjy Sarlin: It seems highly unlikely that John Roberts, having taken withering fire from the right in finding the mandate constitutional two years ago before O-Care launched, would now turn around and nuke the law a year after implementation based on a dispute over statutory construction, with millions of people's coverage hanging in the balance. Roberts probably wanted no part of this. So odds are it was Scalia, Thomas, Alito, and Kennedy(!) who pulled the trigger, and now Roberts is in the hot seat again. Will he double down by saving ObamaCare a second time? Or will he effectively destroy the law by ruling that subsidies for federal consumers are illegal?

Wow. Stand by for a few updates.

Update: An alternate take on Roberts's thinking:


By not ruling against the mandate, I suspect Roberts feels more insulated from political criticisms this time around.

- Mark Hemingway (@Heminator) November 7, 2014[/QUOTE]



Update: You'll hear lots of people today say that the Supremes agreed to hear the Halbig case, but technically speaking that's not true. It's the Fourth Circuit's ruling in favor of ObamaCare that they're hearing, not the D.C. Circuit's Halbig ruling. There's no practical difference, though. Obviously, the Supremes aren't going to defer to the lower court's ruling in a case this momentous.

Update: The silver lining here for ObamaCare supporters, of course, is that this could end up being a giant sh*t sandwich for the new GOP Congress and, more importantly, America's new Republican governors and state legislatures. If Roberts sides with conservatives and finds that the law, as written, says federal consumers aren't eligible for subsidies then the pressure on Congress to re-write that part of that law so that they are eligible will be intense. Boehner and McConnell will dry-heave over the electoral implications of it in 2016, but they'll resist because they know their base would revolt if they rescued O-Care by rewriting that law. So the pressure will shift to the states to quickly build their own exchanges, whose consumers are eligible for subsidies. If you're a Republican legislator or governor facing voters angry that they lost their subsidies because of the Supreme Court, what do you do then?

Update: Yup.


Grant of cert in King is a colossal f*** you to Harry Reid, who burned the filibuster for this case and now gets nothing.

- Dan McLaughlin (@baseballcrank) November 7, 2014[/QUOTE]



Reid nuked the filibuster for lower-court nominations precisely because he wanted to get a bunch of liberals confirmed to the nation's appellate courts, starting with the D.C. Circuit. That strategy was about to pay off when the liberal en banc court overturned the three-judge panel on Halbig. Instead, this.

 

[bigbadjohn45]

Supreme Court to hear new ObamaCare challenge





Published November 07, 2014


FoxNews.com

This June 27, 2012, file photo shows an American flag in front of the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington. (AP)


WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court agreed Friday to hear a new challenge to ObamaCare, bringing the law back before the court after it survived a brush with death in 2012.


At issue in this case is the legality of subsidies offered to help millions of low- and middle-income people buy health insurance. Opponents argue that most of the subsidies are illegal.



A federal appeals court upheld Internal Revenue Service regulations that allow health-insurance tax credits under the Affordable Care Act for consumers in all 50 states.


But opponents of the subsidies argued the Supreme Court should resolve the issue now because it involves billions of dollars in public money. At least four justices, needed to grant review, apparently agreed with the challengers that the issue is important enough to decide now.


The case is likely to be heard in the spring of 2015.


"Today's grant is bad news for the administration but good news for the rule of law," Joshua Halwey, counsel to the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty which has been involved in ObamaCare challenges, said in a statement.


White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said the congressional intent behind the law is for eligible customers regardless of where they live to receive assistance from the government to subsidize the purchase of health care. He promised a vigorous defense before the high court.


"The ACA is working. These lawsuits won't stand in the way of the Affordable Care Act and the millions of Americans who can now afford health insurance because of it," he said in a statement, calling the lawsuit "just another partisan attempt to undermine the Affordable Care Act and to strip millions of American families of tax credits that Congress intended for them to have."


The justices upheld the heart of the law in a 5-4 decision in 2012 in which Chief Justice John Roberts provided the decisive vote, preserving the law's individual mandate to buy insurance.


This past June, the court again ruled on ObamaCare, this time siding with companies that had religious objections over the law's requirement to provide contraceptive coverage. The ruling forced the administration to adjust the regulations, but did not seriously disrupt the health law.


The case over insurance subsidies, though, puts more at stake for the administration. The insurance subsidies are a key plank of the law's system for ensuring that the people required to buy insurance can actually afford to pay for it. Foes have challenged the legality of providing them in states that do not have their own insurance exchanges -- in other words, those using HealthCare.gov.


In July, a Richmond, Virginia-based appeals court upheld Internal Revenue Service regulations that allow health-insurance tax credits under the Affordable Care Act for consumers in all 50 states.


On that same July day, a panel of appellate judges in Washington, District of Columbia, sided with the challengers in striking down the IRS regulations. The Washington court held that under the law, financial aid can be provided only in states that have set up their own insurance markets, known as exchanges.


The administration said in court papers that the federal government is running the exchanges in 34 states and that nearly 5 million people receive subsidies that allow them to purchase health insurance through those exchanges.


For those federal exchange consumers, the subsidies cover 76 percent of their premiums, on average. Customers now pay an average of $82 on total monthly premiums averaging $346. The federal subsidy of $264 a month makes up the difference.


But in October, the entire Washington appeals court voted to rehear the case and threw out the panel's ruling, eliminating the so-called circuit split. The appeals argument has been scheduled for December 17, but that case now recedes in importance with the Supreme Court's action to step in.


The court rarely steps into a case when there is no disagreement among federal appellate courts, unless a law or regulation has been ruled invalid.


Fox News' Shannon Bream and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
This post was edited on 11/7 2:45 PM by bigbadjohn45