Posted on 07/25/2014 5:43:06 PM PDT by John Semmens
This past week’s D.C. Court of Appeals panel ruling that customers in the 36 states that didn’t establish their own exchange and use HealthCare.gov instead cannot be given premium tax credits was assailed by the program’s backers as “flagrant judicial activism.”
Presidential Press Secretary Josh Earnest promised that “this insupportable ruling will be ignored. For the Court to insist upon a literal reading of the statute at this late date would unduly hamper the President’s scope of action. He cannot and will not abide having his hands tied by this judicial interference.”
At issue is explicit statutory language in the Affordable Care Act that permits federal subsidies to only those states that set up state healthcare exchanges. Thus far only a third of the states have set up such exchanges. The Obama Administration, though, has been awarding subsidies to all states.
“Millions of people have come to depend on these subsidies,” Earnest pointed out. “To cut them off now on the pretext that there is no statutory authority for the subsidies to two-thirds of the nation places legalistic formalism ahead of human rights. That’s not a legacy the President intends to leave behind.”
“The original intent of legislative language limiting subsidy eligibility was to proffer an incentive for states to set up exchanges,” explained Jonathan Gruber, one of the architects of the legislation. “By dangling a ‘carrot’ of millions of dollars in federal aid in front of the states it was hoped that they’d be induced to take on the task of establishing healthcare exchanges and relieve the federal government of this burden.”
Gruber characterized the original intent as “no longer operative. Obviously, the lure failed to elicit the response desired. Since the fundamental purpose of Obamacare is to establish a comprehensive and uniform health care system a reinterpretation of the statutory history is required. The interpretation that is currently most in line with the President’s objective is that the exclusionary language was a typographical error. In light of the fact that key participants in the process openly acknowledged that they hadn’t read the bill before voting on it I think there is reasonable grounds for a conclusion that it was a typo. And we can’t let a typo impede social justice.”
The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals ruling this week seemed to bolster Gruber’s reinterpretation. While agreeing with the DC Court that “the plain language of the statute makes a clear distinction on eligibility for federal subsidies” it refused to believe that “such an ill-conceived and stupid ploy aimed at bribing states to set up exchanges should be allowed to wreak negative impacts on the beneficiaries of government’s handouts.”
if you missed any of this week's other semi-news/semi-satire posts you can find them at...
http://azconservative.org/2014/07/25/despicable-anti-clinton-books-should-be-banned/
Enforcing the law is “judicial interference?”
Is God our president?
Another home run, Mr. Semmens.
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