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The Supreme Court on Monday gave new life to a lawsuit challenging ObamaCare’s contraception mandate, striking down a previous ruling in favor of the federal government. An appeals court in Cincinnati will now reconsider the legal challenge from the Catholic groups in Michigan and Tennessee that had sought exemptions from an ObamaCare provision that requires employers to cover birth control for all workers. The justices asked the lower court to reconsider the case in light of last year's landmark ruling on the contraception mandate. That ruling, which was issued last June, decided that the arts-and-crafts retailer, Hobby Lobby, could...

WASHINGTON — The Senate's top five Republican leaders have cosponsored legislation to extend until 2017 the Obamacare insurance subsidies that may be struck down by the Supreme Court this summer. The legislation, offered by Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI), one of the most politically vulnerable Senate incumbents in 2016, would maintain the federal HealthCare.gov subsidies at stake in King v. Burwell through the end of August 2017. The bill was unveiled this week with 29 other cosponsors, including Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and his four top deputies, Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX), John Thune (R-SD), John Barrasso (R-WY) and Roy...

The Supreme Court has again thwarted the Obama administration’s illegal crusade to coerce employers into violating their religious convictions. Late last Wednesday, Associate Justice Samuel Alito stayed an order secured by the administration in a lower court that would have forced several Catholic organizations to comply with Obamacare’s contraception mandate. Despite a high-profile Supreme Court defeat last June in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby, President Obama’s HHS bureaucrats and lawyers have continued their attempts to bully obviously exempt entities into obeying the mandate. Justice Alito’s action constitutes the fifth time SCOTUS has been compelled to rein the government in. The Court...

... Regardless of whether you're a supporter or opponent of Obamacare, you may have missed an important "ruling" from the U.S. Supreme Court earlier this week that resulted in Obamacare logging a key victory. The case, Coons vs. Lew, was initially brought to court in 2011 by business owner Nick Coons and orthopedic surgeon Dr. Eric Novack. The two, with the help of additional legal backing, alleged that the Independent Payment Advisory Board, or IPAB, would trim Medicare costs and potentially hurt their business by instituting reimbursement levels that wouldn't cover their own expenses. These allegations are where the term...

The Supreme Court today decided it will not hear a lawsuit challenging the death panels in Obamacare that pro-life groups strongly opposed because they involve rationing health care and potentially denying lifesaving medical treatment — putting patients’ right to life at risk.Previously, one of the leading national pro-life groups called for legislation to repeal the Independent Payment Advisory Board established by the controversial Obamacare legislation because of pro-life concerns about it.“Repeal of the Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB) is critical to prevent the rationing of life-saving medical treatment,” said Burke Balch, J.D., director of National Right to Life’s Robert Powell...

Medicaid, the entitlement program for low-income Americans jointly funded by the state and federal government, represents about 25 percent of state budgets. Federal funding represents more than half (57 percent) of that amount, and that funding is now being threatened by Obamacare. In what seems like déjà-vu all over again, Maine’s Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) is pursuing a lawsuit to prevent this sort of federal coercion. Here’s the scoop: In 2009, the American Recovery & Reinvestment Act (ARRA) offered states stimulus funds if they agreed to a maintenance-of-effort (“MOE”) provision that required them to maintain Medicaid-eligibility standards...

There is a way out. The path to freedom is available -- and increasingly possible as Obamacare opposition grows and support for repeal increases. Here is a starter package of much-needed policy changes: ⦁ Repeal every word of Obamacare, including the ban on pre-existing condition exclusions. ⦁ Refuse to legalize Obama’s illegal subsidies if King wins King v. Burwell. ⦁ Refuse to build a state exchange no matter who wins King v. Burwell. ⦁ Restore access to indemnity (catastrophic) policies – true health insurance ⦁ Offer individual insurance pre-birth, with ownership linked to the baby. ⦁ Encourage ownership of insurance...

IT is time to talk about President Obama’s contingency plan for health care. The Supreme Court heard oral arguments earlier this month in King v. Burwell, a case challenging the provision of tax credits on federal insurance exchanges. While the legal issues are dry lawyers’ fare — how to interpret several interconnected phrases of the Affordable Care Act — the practical stakes are high. The government estimates that millions of Americans will be left without affordable health insurance if it loses. While the administration may well prevail, it has expressed remarkable pessimism about its options if it does lose. The...

As we await a decision in the big Obamacare Supreme Court case, King v. Burwell, progressive pundits have continued to predict a health care apocalypse if the Court sides with challengers to the Obama administration. That’s a wild exaggeration. But there will be some disruption, and Republicans in Congress have been debating the best way to mitigate that disruption. That’s where Associate Justice Samuel Alito comes in. At oral arguments on Wednesday, Alito hinted at another way to overturn illegal subsidies while avoiding near-term problems for the newly insured. The Northern Pipeline precedent At the hearing, President Obama’s Solicitor General,...

Chief Justice John Roberts, who saved President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul three years ago by unexpectedly joining the liberal wing of the court, stayed largely silent in oral arguments on a new challenge that could deal a mortal blow to the law. The argument centers on whether four words in the more than 1,000-page act should be interpreted literally, which would render millions of people who live in the dozens of states that did not set up their own insurance exchanges ineligible for federal subsidies to help them purchase insurance.

11:26: When a law is ambiguous, the court often defers to the agency in charge of administering it. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit said just that, and that the IRS’ interpretation that subsidies were available to all was a reasonable one. Verrilli resisted questions about ambiguity, saying it was clear. But if not, he said, the agency does deserve deference. But Justice Anthony M. Kennedy said he was concerned about giving the power to allocate billions of dollars in subsidies to an agency. It was then that Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. asked his only...

And none of them make the IRS look very good. This week, the Supreme Court considers King v. Burwell. At issue is whether the IRS exceeded its authority under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act by issuing a final IRS rule that expanded the application of the Act’s subsidies and mandates beyond the limits imposed by the statute. King v. Burwell is not a constitutional challenge. It challenges an IRS rule as being inconsistent with the Act it purports to implement. The case is a straightforward question of statutory interpretation. Here are seven things everyone needs to know about...

Analysis One of the most important functions of oral argument in the Supreme Court is that it can strongly shape the next round: the private deliberations among the nine Justices as they start work on a decision.  The much-awaited hearing Wednesday on the stiff new challenge to the Affordable Care Act strongly suggested that Topic A in private could well be: how bad will we make things if we rule against the government? Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, who seemed decidedly more sympathetic to the government than might have been expected, worried over a constitutional blow against the states.  But even the two Justices...

The Supreme Court appeared sharply divided Wednesday as it began hearing arguments on the fate of Obamacare.Justices seemed “bitterly divided” during “heated” arguments over the law, reported The New York Times. If they rule that the federal subsidies the Internal Revenue Service has doled out for Obamacare plans are illegal, millions of people would no longer be able to afford their plans, and the entire law would be crippled. The four liberal justices indicated strong support for the Obama administration’s position, in opposition to the most conservative members of the court. Those four will likely have to win over either...

See how things are going at the link.... "The challengers’ attorney Michael Carvin barely got a dozen words out before Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg interrupted him to ask about his plaintiffs’ standing." "Justice Anthony Kennedy says he sees 'a serious constitutional problem' in the idea Congress would force states to set up exchanges or risk their residents losing tax credits."

If you want a sense of just how far-reaching the impact of a Supreme Court decision gutting Obamacare subsidies could prove, new data on health care signups released this week provide a fresh way to game out such a ruling’s consequences. The Department of Health and Human Services announced the other day that some 11.4 million people have signed up for health plans through federal marketplaces. The new HHS data also provides a breakdown of the number of sign-ups in each of the three dozen states on the federal exchange — precisely the states that would no longer get subsidies...

Supporters of ObamaCare think they’ve found a fatal flaw in the GOP-led legal challenge to the healthcare law at the Supreme Court. Legal experts in favor of the Affordable Care Act say new information unearthed about the plaintiffs in King v. Burwell could derail the case before the justices have a chance to rule. “The case made by the [Affordable Care Act]’s opponents is unraveling around them,” Brianne Good and Joey Meyer, legal experts from the progressive group Constitutional Accountability Center, wrote in a blog this week. The standing of the four plaintiffs in the case has come under intense...

Did you know that the future of Obamacare relies on the credibilty of former Senator Ben "Cornhusker Kickback" Nelson? Yes, the Huffington Post and other liberal media outlets seem to think that what Nelson tells us was going on in his mind at the time that Obamacare passed is crucial to the outcome of the King vs Burwell case at the Supreme Court. Such is the desperate premise of Jonathan Cohn, Senior National Correspondent of the Huffington Post and other liberals looking for that lifeline out of the dilemma that the Obmacare law specifically says that only state based exchanges...

Remember the issue in Halbig? There’s a section in the ObamaCare statute that says federal subsidies to pay premiums are available to anyone who buys their insurance through “an Exchange established by the State.” But that phrase is vaguely worded. Is the federal ObamaCare exchange, Healthcare.gov, an exchange established by the state? Or was the idea that subsidies should apply only to exchanges created by the individual states, as an economic incentive to encourage state governments to create their own insurance marketplaces? You know what Jonathan Gruber thinks, or thought, about that. By this summer, we’ll know what John...

Senate Republicans are preparing a legislative plan of action in case the Supreme Court strikes a major blow against ObamaCare and rules subsidies provided to people on the federal exchange are illegal. GOP senators are confident the justices will rule in their favor, and they want to be ready to act if millions of people lose their subsidies to buy insurance through the healthcare law. “If the Supreme Court were to say the law says what the law says, we would like to be ready with a response to that that makes practical sense for the 5 or 6 million...