Discussion for article #233721
The United States IS a state. For example: http://www.oas.org/en/member_states/default.asp
Therefore, any exchange established by the United States is “established by the State”. Period. End of story.
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That was my first reaction too. In addition it doesn’t explicitly say that a federal exchange could not provide subsidies.
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Cross post . . .
[quote=“OldenGoldenDecoy, post:2, topic:17449, full:true”]
Heads up…
Editor’s Note:
The Court expects to issue decisions in argued cases on both Tuesday and Wednesday at 10 a.m. We will begin live-blogging at approximately 9:45 both days. The Court also has confirmed that the audiotape of Wednesday’s hearing in King v. Burwell will not be released on that day, but on Friday, as is usual.
So check in on Friday March 6 2015 if you wish to hear the audio of the proceedings.[/quote]
~OGD~
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replace the word “by” with “for” and there is no issue.
As in “by the state”; to “for the state” - presumably an individual state could produce a web site for that state, or the federal government could produce a web site FOR that state.
So that means the whole case hinges on the use and interpretation of a preposition. which is amongst the most plyable set of words in the English language. Consider ON, AT, IN,
I was born ON july 1, IN the year 1975, AT 12:37 IN the afternoon, IN the state of Illinois.
Why are we born ON a month or date but AT a specific time but IN a general time?
If we change those up, can you still tell the exact meaning?
I was born at July 1, on the year 1975, IN 12:37 AT the afternoon, AT the state of Illinois?
Has the meaning of that sentence change even though I misused the prepositions?
How frequently do people misuse prepositions? How often does that alter the meaning? How much does preposition usage very by location?
Does a Supreme Court justice want to throw 20 million people off health care insurance over the misapplication of preposition, when everyone knew the actually meaning anyway?
Under the doctrine of cognative dissodance:
Does the meaning of state have to apply to a State? Was the word state capitalized? Does that then exclude districts, such as the District which is the District of Columbia? Is not the United States a state, in the meaning of a Nation State, according to the principles of the treaty of Westphalia which is commonly accepted international law and as such, under the constitution, part of the law of the United States?
I don’t have much faith in the supreme court to do the right or reasonable thing. In the last big ACA case, the issue was mandates, and though the constitution clearly gives the Federal Govt the power to manage the economy in the commerce clause (because the word economics in its now common usage did not yet exist, otherwise that would be called the economics clause), Judge Roberts says that that means the federal government can only manipulate supply, not demand (i.e. mandates). Because economics is made up of only two things, supply and demand, It is inconceivable that an economics clause would deny the government the power to manipulate both supply and demand, through spending and mandates. Instead Roberts gave the power to use mandates over to the power to tax. This is going to mean BIG trouble at a future time.
If they can’t get that right, what chance do they have with determining the use of prepositions in a sentence?
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Yes, but what about states that refer to themselves as commonwealths. They are still considered to be states. A Massachusetts resident would be purchasing insurance from a state exchange in the commonwealth of Massachusetts.
The article is extremely helpful in summing up where we’re at on things going into the arguments.
The one question Sahil didn’t ask is about the remedy. If the challengers get their desired ruling, what’s the proposed remedy? If they’re going with a hyper-literalist argument that the ACA requires that subsidies be offered “through an Exchange established by the State” then the only logical remedy is to require every state to implement their own exchange.
The text in the ACA is affirmative – this shall happen – so if their argument is that the states are sposta do it rather than the feds, then surely their desired remedy is to require 51 exchanges be created for every state and the District of Columbia, correct?
The King plaintiffs have no standing as to Harm and then we have Sec of State …Head of State, etc…seems a specious argument.
roberts and his 4 other activist conservative jurists would not want to be remembered as the PANEL that CREATED REAL DEATH PANELS FOR 9 MILLION AMERICANS and their FAMILIES …or are they so isolated and insular that they do not care?
It is a tossup!
If the SCOTUS rules to eliminate the federal exchanges then its time to challenge the anti trust protections that the insurance industry enjoys and end the 70 billion dollar subsidy taxpayers pay each year to the insurance industry.
They wouldn’t eliminate them, just the subsidies that are available through them.
Which raises the question – because ACA doesn’t work without the mandate, and the mandate doesn’t work without the subsidies, why would Congress establish a Federal exchange in the ACA if you couldn’t get insurance subsidies via the Federal exchange? The clear answer is that Congress wouldn’t establish a Federal exchange that couldn’t offer subsidies. It would serve no purpose, because people can buy insurance without subsidies directly from insurance companies or brokers.
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“…it risks being portrayed by Democrats as an activist decision by the Supreme Court to advance Republican political goals…”
Because it would be. That’s the only reason to be blind to the obvious intent of the law.
Look around.
Well, that or maybe trying to land a lucrative gig at the next big Koch brothers bash.