Posted on 07/01/2014 4:47:27 AM PDT by Hojczyk
The D.C. Circuit Court is expected to rule any day now on the Halbig case, and supporters of the Affordable Care Act are growing nervous. In January, an Obamacare advocate described the Halbig case to a reporter for the Hill as "probably the most significant existential threat to the Affordable Care Act.
All the other lawsuits that have been filed really don't go to the heart of the ACA, and this one would have." And in a fraught oral argument before the D.C. Circuit Court, the administration seemed to struggle to defend its interpretation.
If the ruling goes against the White House, it's hard to overstate the impact. Without subsidies, consumers in 34 states would face huge additional costs and, because of those costs, potential exemptions from the law. And voters — a substantial percentage of whom have never liked Obamacare — would be further alienated from the Democratic Party just in time for midterm elections.
ruling against the administration would mean that Obama has been responsible for ordering what could amount to billions of dollars to be paid from the federal Treasury without authority. And it would mean the administration has committed yet another violation of the separation of power
The administration's loss in the Hobby Lobby case is a bitter pill to swallow, but it is not a lethal threat to Obamacare. For critics of the law, Halbig is everything that Hobby Lobby is not. Where Hobby Lobby exempts only closely held corporations from a portion of the ACA rules, Halbig could allow an mass exodus from the program. And like all insurance programs, it only works if large numbers are insured so that the risks are widely spread. Halbig could leave Obamacare on life support — and lead to another showdown in the Supreme Court.
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
What a poorly written article
Nope. No bias there.
The article itself is not so bad. The summary has been gorched.
I’m pretty sure the Court’s term is over until fall, not that an MSM ‘reporter’ would know anything about which they write.
Hard to guess whether they meant "a mass exodus", or "en masse exodus".
For USSC, that's true. For the D.C. Circuit court? I don't know.
Funny, I thought the same thing.
Obamacare is a political blunder of Ceausescuian proportions.
By the time this comes before SCOTUS the entire Democrat Party may be down on their knees begging them to scuttle it.
Good point. I may have spoke too soon.
Without subsidies, consumers in 34 states would face huge additional costs and, ...
....and Taxpayers will reap untold billions in Savings.
There, I fixed the report
Without subsidies, consumers in 34 states would face huge additional costs and, because of those costs, potential exemptions from the law.
Subsidies do not make it more affordable, they simply shift higher costs to a different party.
So, a logical person would ask, how do huge increases equal "affordable"? Since liberals don't wonder this, what does that tell us about liberals?
This is why I’m not that excited about Hobby Lobby. Its too little, too late. We have the monstrosity that is Obamacare. So closely-held businesses don’t need to provide free birth control. So what? Is that really a huge victory? No. Its carving out a small piece of an otherwise totalitarian law. Its being happy that we were not beaten while we were being raped. Obamacare has to go, but its looking more and more like it won’t because the feckless GOP has given up the fight and the courts don’t have the balls to overturn it.
“Obamacare is a political blunder of Ceausescuian proportions.”
So was Social Security in its day. But the Marxists of its day peed on the Constitution and got it implemented.
“”Obamacare is a political blunder of Ceausescuian proportions””
Could we be that lucky???? We could keep our fingers crossed.
There is another case peculating up that challenges the ACA based on the origination of the penalty that was determined to not be a penalty but a tax coming out of the Senate. If that is not overturned it means the origination clause is meaningless with the Senate stripping any bill from the House and inserting any new tax.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.