Free Republic

For most people, words mean what they say. But not necessarily for a majority of Supreme Court justices in two important decisions handed down Thursday. In the most prominent, King v. Burwell, Chief Justice John Roberts, writing for a 6-3 majority, ruled that the words "established by the state" mean "established by the state or the federal government." In a second decision, Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs v. The Inclusive Communities Project, Justice Anthony Kennedy, writing for a 5-4 majority, ruled that the omission in the 1968 Fair Housing Act of words banning acts that have a disparate...

Train Wreck: From the tone of his Obama-Care opinion, Chief Justice Roberts seems to believe he's spared a law that's working just fine. Wrong. With or without the court's help, ObamaCare is in desperate shape.

Good news from the Supreme Court today: If you like your health care subsidies, you can keep them. If you like limited government and the separation of powers, you are out of luck. Now that Chief Justice Roberts and five of his colleagues found that the phrase “Exchange established by the State” means “Exchange established by the State or the Federal Government,” we should henceforth follow Justice Scalia’s suggestion that this act of Congress, which had to be passed before the People knew what was in it and then had to be rescued not once, but twice, by a complicit...

Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts has rewritten the law to save Obamacare—again. Roberts’ majority opinion today in King v. Burwell, which ruled that the Obama administration’s decision to allow health insurance subsidies flow through the law’s federal exchanges, leaves no doubt that Roberts considers it his duty to keep the law afloat. "Congress passed the Affordable Care Act to improve health insurance markets, not to destroy them," he writes. "If at all possible, we must interpret the Act in a way that is consistent with the former, and avoids the latter." And so Roberts decided that a law which...

The Supreme Court had an opportunity, with its ruling in King v. Burwell, to determine whether the United States is a nation of laws or of men. Today, in a 6-3 decision, the Court ruled that we have devolved into the latter. Although the text of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (a.k.a. Obamacare) clearly states that the government may issue subsidies only through insurance exchanges established by the states, Obama administration bureaucrats unilaterally rewrote that part of the law so that the IRS could dispense such premium assistance through “marketplaces” created by the federal government. The plaintiffs in...

No excerpt. It's a PDF. Scalia's dissenting opinion begins on page 27.

Anyone who thinks ObamaCare will cut the deficit over the next decade should look at Page 11 of the latest Congressional Budget Office report. The table on that page shows how the trillions in ObamaCare subsidies are supposed to be "paid for" — by tax hikes or spending cuts. What it reveals, however, is that ObamaCare increasingly relies on dubious Medicare spending cuts to cover its growing subsidy costs.

Before the end of its current term (June 30th), the United States Supreme Court will determine whether the law of the land is established in the Constitution or by the various bureaucracies working to impose the agenda of the Obama Regime. IF the Court decides in favor of the Constitution, ObamaCare–the Affordable Care Act–will be destroyed financially. It will effectively cease to exist. In November of last year, the Court agreed to hear King v Burwell, a suit filed against the Internal Revenue Service for usurping the power of Congress by granting itself the authority to spend $800 billion tax...

WASHINGTON — (...) The U.S. Supreme Court will soon decide whether the subsidies can continue for 6.4 million people in 34 states who use the federal insurance marketplace at HealthCare.gov. (...) More than 4.1 million people, or nearly two out of three who could lose their subsidies in the case this year, live in just 13 Southern states – Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia and West Virginia. Read more here: http://www.macon.com/2015/06/16/3799971/loss-of-health-care-subsidies.html#storylink=cpy

Health Reform: It's been five years since President Obama signed ObamaCare into law, so why is he still giving speeches defending it? Because this isn't about health care. It's about attacking the Supreme Court.

A Supreme Court ruling against the Obama administration in King v. Burwell, according to conventional Beltway wisdom, will create serious political problems for governors and legislators in the 34 states that declined to set up Obamacare insurance exchanges. Most of these officials are Republicans, the thinking goes, and will thus be blamed for letting petty partisanship deprive their constituents of subsidies while plunging state insurance markets into chaos. Public wrath, we are told, will eventually force them to create PPACA exchanges. However, a new voter survey conducted in the affected states suggests that this is very unlikely to occur. According...

Before the month ends, the U.S. Supreme Court will decide whether millions of Americans will be able to keep government subsidies used to purchase health insurance. It’s unclear how the court will rule, but the high-stakes case has already ignited a flurry of doomsday predictions and political posturing in the event the subsidies are struck down. Republicans, who control Congress, have put forward a few proposals that would protect the subsidies in some form but only by repealing major tenets of the Affordable Care Act, President Barack Obama’s signature health law. But some health experts and advocacy groups say these...

Health Care: We keep hearing about how millions will lose insurance if the Supreme Court strikes down ObamaCare's federal exchange subsidies. But there's another side to this story that never gets discussed until now.

House Budget Committee Chairman Tom Price (R-Ga.) said Thursday that he does not support an idea backed by Senate Republican leadership to temporarily extend ObamaCare subsidies if the Supreme Court cripples the law. "I don't think that I would be able to be supportive of continuing the subsidies beyond what the Court would allow," Price told The Hill. A plan from Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) to continue the subsidies until 2017 has been co-sponsored by Senate Republican leaders. Price is one of the most prominent Republicans to come out against the idea. The idea behind the temporary continuation is that...

Nancy Pelosi is now predicting that Republicans will “rue the day” that the Supreme Court guts Obamacare subsidies for millions in three dozen states. “They’re going to then go out and say we’re going to take subsidies away from people who have health care? No, I don’t think so,” says Pelosi. “It would be really bad news for them.” Meanwhile, if anything, Republicans may be moving away from their previously-stated vow to participate in providing a contingency fix to temporarily keep those millions covered. The Hill reports that GOP Rep. Tom Price, the chairman of the House budget committee and...

With less than one month to go until the Supreme Court issues a ruling in King v. Burwell -- the case that could dismantle Obamacare -- some states are preparing contingency plans to avert a disaster if the court strikes down access to federally subsidized health care for their residents. If the Court rules against the administration and says that language in the Affordable Care Act only provides subsidies to people enrolled in coverage in states that set up their own marketplaces, some 7.5 million people in the 34 states relying on the federal exchange would lose their subsidized coverage...

Full title: Michael F. Cannon gives a lecture on the topic of, “King v. Burwell: Can the President Rewrite the ACA Without Congress?,” at an event hosted by The Show-Me Institute Video at link

As the Supreme Court considers oral arguments in the King v. Burwell Obamacare subsidy case, the media is awash in claims that a King win will be a political disaster, forcing Republicans to save the illegal Obamacare subsidies issued in the 37 states without a state-based exchange. But the real disaster is the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and the dangers the federal takeover of healthcare poses for patients, doctors, pocketbooks and health freedom. These very real dangers include: Socializing Medicine – The ACA sets up Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs) to nationalize the delivery of medical care. ACOs, sometimes called “HMOs...

As the U.S. Supreme Court considers a case whose outcome could prove to be a death blow to Obamacare — the case known as King v. Burwell challenging whether enrollees through the federal signup site, healthcare.gov, are entitled to premium-reducing subsidies — one key justice has casually dropped what could be a huge clue to his thinking. And this potential clue suggests to some court watchers that Justice Anthony Kennedy — who often casts the high court’s swing vote — may be siding with plaintiffs who want to gut a key part of Obamacare and likely bring the law crashing...

If you carefully consider the claims of Obamacare’s defenders in King v. Burwell you will discover that their worst fear, sanctimonious pretense notwithstanding, is not the loss of insurance subsidies for some Americans. The most terrifying prospect for proponents of PPACA is that the Court will let Congress clean up its own mess. They do not want our elected representatives to have another chance to consider the will of the voters while revising Obamacare ... Nothing scares Obamacarians more than the will of the people.