A guest post on The Washington Post’s Volokh Conspiracy blog has Washington buzzing about a possible outcome of the Supreme Court decision on King v Burwell.
James Blumstein, University professor of constitutional law and health law and policy at Vanderbilt Law School and director of the Vanderbilt Health Policy Center, explains in his article, “Why the procedural posture of King v. Burwell might matter.”
With only three decision days still scheduled for this Supreme Court Term (Thursday, Friday, and Monday), the waiting for the Court’s decision in King v. Burwell will soon be over. Can there still be something new to say or think about at this point? Remarkably, the answer is yes.
The Supreme Court of the United States will soon decide the case of King v. Burwell. The legal question there is simple: Can the president wave his magic wand and rewrite Obamacare to mean whatever he wants it to mean? The correct answer is obviously no. The legal upshot is equally obvious: If King is correctly decided, the president will be barred from doling out Obamacare subsidies in Texas and the dozens of other states that refused to be lured into his eponymous welfare program.
The House voted Tuesday to abolish a cost-cutting board under ObamaCare that has drawn criticism from members of both parties.
Lawmakers voted 244-154 to abolish what is known as the Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB). The board is tasked with coming up with Medicare cuts if spending rises above a certain threshold, but has been criticized as outsourcing the work of Congress to unelected bureaucrats.
Repeal of the board has split Democrats, 20 of whom cosponsored the repeal bill. Eleven voted with Republicans on Tuesday to kill it.
In the next few days, the Supreme Court will issue a decision in King v. Burwell, the most contentious case of the year. (I’m not counting same-sex marriage because everyone thinks it’s a foregone conclusion.) For those still unfamiliar with what is probably the last existential legal challenge to Obamacare, King asks whether the text of the Affordable Care Act, which provides for subsidies for people who buy health insurance from exchanges “established by the state,” also allows the IRS to give these tax credits to those buying from the federal healthcare.gov.
Jonathan Gruber, the embattled Massachusetts Institute of Technology economist whose comments about President Barack Obama’s health law touched off a political furor, worked more closely than previously known with the White House and top federal officials to shape and influence the law, according to previously unreleased emails.
Long before there was the Affordable Care Act, presidential candidate and Democratic front-runner Secretary Hillary Clinton was advocating for her own version of health care reform, popularly known as “Hillarycare.” While the Clintons failed to successfully implement Hillarycare, a little over a decade later, President Barack Obama passed “Obamacare,” which effectively overhauled the United States health care system. While the general refrain in the media touted that Obamacare was different than Hillarycare, the two are actually very similar in structure and regulation.
The Affordable Care Act created a new kind of “cooperative” heralded by supporters of health reform. These Consumer Operated and Oriented Plans, chartered and regulated by the states, would compete with for-profit health-insurance companies and were meant to appease disgruntled advocates of a single-payer and “public option” model for the nation’s health-care system.
The Supreme Court will soon decide King v. Burwell, the case that will determine whether tax credits being paid in at least 34 states without their own exchanges are legal. If the Supreme Court makes the administration follow the letter of the law, billions of dollars of federal tax credits will continue to flow to 16 states, but not the rest. This will result in a political crisis giving Congress and President Obama the opportunity to fix the worst aspects of Obamacare.
Most of the 13 state-run public health insurance have collectively spent $4.8 billion in federal funding during their first 17 months of operations and face serious cash-flow problems, according to a website named after the late conservative commentator Andrew Breitbart.
And with major insurance carriers seeking HIX premium increases of up to 51% in some states, the report suggested marketplace mergers as one political solution. It noted that both Covered California and Vermont Health Connect significantly overestimated enrollment and now must slash advertising, outreach and technology services.