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Keyword: halbig

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  • Harry Reid’s Court-Packing Scheme Pays Off In Halbig Case

    09/19/2014 3:25:18 PM PDT · by SteveH · 3 replies
    The Federalist ^ | Sept. 5, 2014 | Ross Kaminsky
    But because the current administration recognized this court as critical in future legal challenges to Obamacare, they wanted to – and hypocritically did – shift the balance of the court in a decidedly Progressive way – which is to say in a way which recognizes almost no limits on government power nor on the appropriate behavior of judges in expanding that power. On Thursday, those malign efforts paid off for Obama and Reid as the DC Circuit agreed to an en banc review (all of the judges rehearing the case after it is initially decided by a three-judge panel) of...
  • Federal Court Throws Out Obamacare Subsidies Ruling

    09/04/2014 9:41:07 AM PDT · by GIdget2004 · 47 replies
    NBCNews.com ^ | 09/04/2014 | Pete Williams
    In a victory for the Obama administration, a federal appeals court in Washington, D.C. Thursday threw out an earlier ruling that said financial subsidies are not available for people who bought health insurance on the federal exchange. A three-judge panel of the D.C. Court of Appeals reached that conclusion in late July. On the same day, a federal appeals court in Richmond reached the opposite conclusion and said the subsidies are available. But Thursday, the full D.C. Court of Appeals said it will re-hear the case, which erases the lower court ruling that went against the subsidies. This greatly diminishes...
  • The Manufactured Crisis of Halbig

    09/01/2014 8:49:12 AM PDT · by SteveH · 3 replies
    The Huffington Post ^ | August 27, 2014 | Elizabeth Taylor
    The two judges in the majority in Halbig focused on the literal terms of isolated language in the ACA and, in so doing, ignored the other provisions that conflict with that literal reading. Those judges are like the mechanic working on an engine who has a few pieces left over and just throws them away, not worrying that the engine no longer works the way it should. We should give the rest of the mechanic's team a chance to put the engine back together properly.
  • Michael Greve on Halbig and Its Aftermath

    08/06/2014 6:33:57 PM PDT · by SteveH · 7 replies
    Volokh Conspiracy via The Washington Post ^ | August 6, 2014 | Jonathan H. Alder
    Greve writes: The King and Halbig plaintiffs’ argument is that the statutory language must mean what it plainly says: Obamacare’s machinery of subsidies and mandates requires exchanges to be established by a state. The government and its defenders say that this can’t be right: since only some 14 states have established an exchange, plaintiffs’ position would render Obamacare inoperable for most of the country—and Congress cannot have intended that. “By a state,” they insist, must mean something like “by a state, or the federal government stepping into its shoes.” Needless to say, the plaintiffs and defendants have spun out and...
  • People don’t get the new Obamacare lawsuits, but they think all exchanges should provide subsidies

    08/06/2014 2:28:13 PM PDT · by SteveH · 22 replies
    The Washington Post ^ | August 5, 2014 | Jason Millman
    In short: People haven't paid that close attention to these challenges to Obamacare, and they don't totally understand them. But they mostly agree that anyone eligible for a subsidy should be able to receive it, regardless of who's running an exchange. The new Morning Consult poll of about 1,800 registered voters found that 58 percent of those surveyed said all exchanges — whether they're state- or federal-run — should provide subsidies, while 15 percent disagreed and 27 percent didn't offer an opinion. As the below chart shows, those identifying as liberal were more likely to support subsidies in any exchange...
  • King Might Be Headed to the Supreme Court; Perhaps Halbig To Follow

    08/06/2014 1:48:04 PM PDT · by SteveH · 2 replies
    The National Review ^ | August 5, 2014 | Carrie Severino
    But now those judges will have to decide whether they want their first high-profile act on the court to be one that is baldly political: overturning a meticulously-reasoned decision that overturned the IRS’s attempt to rewrite the Affordable Care Act. It would make the new judges look like presidential pawns who are attempting to save his bacon, lowering them to the level of the disgraced and politicized IRS itself. Even if the D.C. Circuit judges are willing to take the fall for the President in this case, there probably won’t be time to undo the circuit split before the Supreme...
  • Is Halbig v. Burwell En-Banc Worthy?

    08/06/2014 1:29:15 PM PDT · by SteveH · 4 replies
    The Volokh Conspiracy via The Washington Post ^ | August 5, 2014 | Jonathan H. Adler
    It is well understood that just because a court’s opinion is “wrong” does not make it en banc worthy. Judge Jeffery Sutton U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit made this point some years ago. It’s also a point that Judge Edwards made in his opinion respecting the denial of en banc review in Bartlett v. Bowen (1987). Judge Edwards’s opinion in Bartlett is worth quoting at length: The decision to grant en banc consideration is unquestionably among the most serious non-merits determinations an appellate court can make, because it may have the effect of vacating a panel opinion...
  • Obamacare: HuffPo Writer Whines GOP Won't 'Fix' Law to Allow Federal Exchange Subsidies

    08/05/2014 4:23:09 PM PDT · by PJ-Comix · 22 replies
    NewsBusters ^ | August 5, 2014 | P.J. Gladnick
    Jeffrey Young is a health care writer for the Huffington Post but you really have to wonder if he is posting his stories from Bizarro World. He is actually upset that Republicans in Congress, in the wake of the Halbig vs Burwell D.C. Circuit Court decision, won't join together with the Democrats in a giant kumbaya to "fix" the highly unpopular Obamacare law so that the language will clearly state that states using the federal exchange will be eligible for subsidies. What is interesting is how liberals until about a week ago derided the idea that the language of the...
  • A closer look at the courts' impact on health care

    08/05/2014 5:44:42 AM PDT · by SteveH · 2 replies
    WSJ ^ | August 4, 2014 | Drew Altman
    ... Now let’s consider Halbig v. Burwell, a case in which recent appeals court rulings made headlines. Halbig, which raises questions about whether the U.S. government can provide tax credits to people in federal- as well as state-run insurance exchanges, is still churning through the courts. What if the plaintiffs prevail in Halbig, denying tax credits to moderate-income people in states with federal health insurance exchanges? The map below shows the potential combined effect of the 2012 Supreme Court decision and a plaintiffs’ victory in Halbig. (To be clear, the courts are not considering the earlier Medicaid ruling as part...
  • The Halbig Cases: a Compendium

    08/05/2014 5:23:10 AM PDT · by SteveH · 1 replies
    Forbes ^ | August 4, 2014 | Michael J. Cannon
    ... On July 22, 2014, in Halbig v. Burwell, a three- judge panel of the D.C. Circuit sided with the plaintiffs and ruled the IRS is indeed imposing taxes and dispensing subsidies that no Congress ever authorized and that federal law expressly precludes. On the same day, just hours later, a three-judge panel of the Fourth Circuit sided with the government in King v. Burwell. The Obama administration has requested en banc review of the Halbig ruling by the full D.C. Circuit. The King plaintiffs have appealed the Fourth Circuit’s ruling to the Supreme Court. In an earlier post, I...
  • No Need for a Halbig Rehearing

    08/04/2014 8:35:19 PM PDT · by SteveH · 5 replies
    Thee Wall Street Journal ^ | August 3, 2014 | Adam J. White
    ... But if the D.C. Circuit rehears the case en banc, it would be a sharp break from history. The D.C. Circuit rehears virtually none of its cases. Each year the court's three-judge panels make roughly 500 rulings, but the court averages roughly one en banc rehearing. This year has produced a bumper crop: two. The previous year: zero. ....
  • Did Ben Nelson Doom Obamacare?

    08/04/2014 4:39:36 AM PDT · by rootin tootin · 18 replies
    American Spectator ^ | 8/4/2014 | David Catron
    During the oral arguments that preceded the recent appeals court ruling against the Obama administration in Halbig v. Burwell, an under-reported yet crucial discussion took place between two of the judges and counsel for the plaintiffs. Judge Harry T. Edwards pronounced himself confused as to why Congress would have concerned itself with what entity ultimately set up Obamacare’s insurance exchanges. Judge A. Raymond Randolph and attorney Michael A. Carvin did their best to enlighten the befuddled jurist: JUDGE EDWARDS: I’m trying to understand … who cares who sets up the exchange? JUDGE RANDOLPH: Ben Nelson … MR. CARVIN: The enactors...
  • An Obamacare Statist Gets Caught Lying (over and over again)

    08/02/2014 9:16:17 AM PDT · by Kaslin · 18 replies
    Townhall.com ^ | August 2, 2014 | Daniel J. Mitchell
    Many of you probably heard about the “Halbig” decision, in which a federal court struck a blow against Obamacare by ruling that the IRS was wrong to arbitrarily grant subsidies for health insurance policies purchased through a federal exchange. And why did the judges rule against the IRS? Well, for the simple reason that the Obamacare legislation specifically says that subsidies are only available for policies purchased through exchanges set up by state governments. My Cato colleague Michael Cannon explains: The PPACA authorizes the IRS to issue health-insurance tax credits only to taxpayers who purchase coverage “through an Exchange established...
  • Jonathan Gruber’s ‘Speak-O’ Rebutting Himself Heads for the Supreme Court

    08/01/2014 5:33:02 PM PDT · by PJ-Comix · 3 replies
    The Independent Sentinel ^ | August 1, 2014 | Sara Noble
    Jonathan Gruber, one of the architects of Obamacare has filed an amicus brief on behalf of the government in two federal cases, swearing that the government always meant to have the federal government pay out subsidies. Four cases are contesting that issue and at least one is using Jonathan Gruber’s own words to rebut government expert Jonathan Gruber. It will eventually makes its way to the Supreme Court of the United States.It gets even worse than that, the partisan hack “helped” the supposedly nonpartisan CBO concoct their numbers which helped sell Obamacare to the public as cost effective. That discovery comes...
  • Obamacare opponents ask Supreme Court to step in

    08/01/2014 2:19:47 PM PDT · by Oldeconomybuyer · 21 replies
    MSNBC ^ | August 1, 2014 | By Adam Serwer
    The group seeking to invalidate the Affordable Care Act’s subsidies to Americans purchasing health insurance through federally run state marketplaces is asking the Supreme Court to take up the case early. The Competitive Enterprise Institute, the conservative group funding challenges to the IRS rule allowing subsidies to flow to state exchanges, announced Thursday that it was asking the Supreme Court to intervene. The challengers argue that the Affordable Care Act only allows subsidies in exchanges set up by states – an interpretation that could lead to millions of people being unable to afford coverage. Owing largely to Republican resistance, only...
  • Obamacare Architect´s ´Mistake´ About Subsidies Used by HHS as Defense in Court

    08/01/2014 2:15:19 PM PDT · by Nachum · 13 replies
    Breitbart ^ | 8/1/14 | Scot Vorse
    Last Saturday, Breitbart News uncovered three reports and analysis written by Jonathan Gruber, an MIT economist and chief architect of Obamacare, stating that subsidies or tax credits will be provided to individuals “to purchase health insurance from private companies through state-organized exchanges.” These reports were discovered after a video clip surfaced of Gruber making similar comments on the clip. Gruber said his remarks were a "mistake" made while "speaking off-the-cuff." One of the three reports, titled “The Facts Straight on Health Care Reform,” was written by Gruber for The New England Journal of Medicine in December 2009. Breitbart has since
  • #grubergate; Tale of the Tapes (video)

    08/01/2014 2:01:10 PM PDT · by SteveH · 3 replies
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zhavicDc0Ts ^ | July 31, 2014 | AmericanCommitment
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zhavicDc0Ts
  • Speaknado: New Republic 'Obamacare Truther' Confession

    08/01/2014 12:42:36 PM PDT · by PJ-Comix · 3 replies
    NewsBusters ^ | August 1, 2014 | P.J. Gladnick
    AHAHAHAHAHA!!!! AHAHAHAHAHA!!!! Pardon me for channeling my inner Max Cady laugh but I just couldn't help myself. The irony, the embarrassment, and the schadenfreude is just too much to bear without bursting out laughing. It turns out that one of the biggest Obamacare supporters on the Web, Jonathan Cohn of the New Republic, has himself committed a "Speak-O." What makes it even funnier was that Cohn was the person Jonathan "Speak-O" Gruber turned to in order lamely attempt to explain away his premature bout with truthfulness about the fact that the Obamacare law intended for subsidies to go to state-based,...
  • Halbig Shows Leftist Wonks Are Not Very Good at Their Jobs

    08/01/2014 1:03:41 PM PDT · by SteveH · 11 replies
    The Federalist ^ | July 31, 2014 | Sean Davis
    ... To be clear: one of the “leading experts on health care policy” for the Left could not possibly imagine that 36 states would do exactly as 36 states have done. One of the “best health care writers out there” found it hard to believe that 36 states would act exactly as they have acted. At one point during his January 2010 interview with NPR’s Terry Gross, Cohn even went so far as to declare that the ability of a state to opt out would never make it into law. As a result, Cohn admitted that he didn’t even really...
  • Halbig plaintiffs file petition for Writ to SCOTUS

    07/31/2014 4:14:12 PM PDT · by Perdogg · 16 replies
    Brief at link. Halbig plaintiffs file petition for Writ to SCOTUS