Posted on 12/04/2013 11:28:13 AM PST by EBH
If the law known as Obamacare gets struck down in the latest court challenge, the victors will thank a Hudson resident and Case Western Reserve University law professor who discovered what the law's critics say is a major flaw.
Jonathan Adler, 44, says he didn't even appreciate initially how significant his discovery might be. He thought it was an interesting bit of legal arcana, worthy of scholarship. But his analysis of the Affordable Care Act, or ACA, has led to four pending cases in federal courts, two likely to be decided within months, that offer ACA opponents their best chance of gutting the law.
Oral arguments were heard in one of the cases, in U.S. District Court in Washington, DC, on Tuesday.
Adler, a case law professor since 2001, pored over the ACA after it passed in 2010 and found this: Congress created a system for providing tax subsidies and penalties in order to give incentives for people to buy health insurance or for employers to provide it. States were supposed to create new agencies that would offer online insurance-shopping options, and states would tie into a federal tax system to dole out the subsidies and assess the penalties.
But the ACA made clear, Adler says, that the subsidies were to be used in these new state marketplaces, or "exchanges." There is no record, he says, that shows Congress directed the subsidies to what has since evolved: a large, federally run, health-policy shopping exchange. When the subsidies are mentioned in the law, Adler says, it is always and only in the context of state exchanges.
(Excerpt) Read more at cleveland.com ...
Ohio ping?
At this point, the US Government could not care less about any contradictions or over-reaches in the law. The law is effectively meaningless - its the results they are after and it is full-steam ahead.
Bingo.
John Roberts will swat this challenge away like it’s a drunken fly.
If “the Devil is in the details” — then let’s get the Devil to help us ... :-) ...
The law is what Jarrett and Obama say it is. Maybe even just Jarrett. We have no SCOTUS or Legislative branches any more.
That all sounds important.
But when the SCOTUS was considering whether or not our federal government could FORCE by threat of punishment someone to purchase a product, they overroad the defendants own orginal argument and changed punishment to a “tax”. Roberts bent over backwards to find a way to rule the mandate constitutional. In doing so, he invalidated the origination and construct of the law. It did not originate or get passed by the House of Reps as all tax law should. It was argued, presented and passed on Christmas Eve under and invalid pretense. If Obamacare is actually a tax law, as it is actually run by the IRS, it should be repealed on process grounds.
I am unsure about this.
It has been said the law states that if states refuse to setup exchanges, then the federal government will do it for them and charge a penalty.
If the above is the case, then I don’t think this approach has legs.
The surest way to get rid of the Obamacare beast is to defund it and then later repeal it.
However, if as reports say are true that Boehner is going to push through immigration reform early next year, then there will be no republican party power to defund or repeal Obamacare.
What will happen is that the illegals who will be legalized will register to vote regardless of citizenship status. The 2014 elections will then result in power maintained by the democrats in the Senate and probably a return of the House to the democrats.
The republicans in power will do this to hold onto incumbency, nothing more.
I agree with him but let’s wait and see what the courts do. After the roberts fiasco I do not trust the courts to do the right thing
Maybe there were referring to all 57 states??
Special pings to the lists..!
In the public interest, an expedited ruling in favor of the plaintiffs would be an extremely nice Christmas present!
Cleveland ping
I follow the blog that he regularly posts in (The Volokh Conspiracy). Mr. Adler is a very strong advocate of the position that the second amendment does NOT apply to individuals, the two recent Supreme Court decisions notwithstanding. He is convinced SCOTUS got those decisions wrong. According to him, the second amendment only applies to organized militias.
I don’t know if his reasoning is any better here.
“Based on the law, Adler says, the Internal Revenue Service has no legal authority to give tax subsidies to people enrolling in the federal exchange. The IRS wrote a regulation as if it has that right, but Adler says the ACA never empowered it to do so.”
*****
This is really interesting. I hope he is successful.
Correct. They’ll get crazy rulings from wacko Judges, or they’ll just ignore the law and plow ahead. Either way, no biggy to them.
Obastard signaled a willingness to do this back when he ordered a moratorium on drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, flying in the face of a Federal Court decision specifically forbidding the action. If there was any doubt about his willingness to be a lawless President, that one thing alone cleared all that up.
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