King v. Burwell: Obamacare subsidies upheld by Supreme Court

A few days before the Obamacare and same-sex marriage cases dropped, the New York Times published a fascinating data analysis showing that the Supreme Court was on track to have one of the most liberal terms in years.

But is the Court getting more liberal or are the cases getting more conservative?

Nicholas Bagley, an assistant law professor at University of Michigan, has an amazing analogy to help understand King v. Burwell, the Supreme Court case decided yesterday upholding Obamacare’s insurance subsidies:

Nick has been one of the smartest, most consistent writers on the King case, and his Amelia Bedelia analogy perfectly captures the way the King plaintiffs read the Affordable Care Act.

Philip Klein is one of the right’s smartest health-care writers, and in the aftermath of King v. Burwell, he has some advice for Republicans: they need “to lay out a detailed vision for market-based system, and to spend the next election doggedly making their case.”

This is not going to happen. Republicans are never going to unite around a serious replacement for Obamacare and endure the political pain necessary to get it passed.

Amid a flurry of official statements declaring shock, outrage, and disappointment after the Supreme Court upheld the Affordable Care Act’s federal insurance subsidies Thursday, Republicans quietly confided they were feeling something else, too: relief.

The fight over whether and how to repair the law could have been a disaster for the GOP. A CBS News/New York Times poll released this week found that 70 percent of respondents wanted the court to keep the subsidies and 64 percent wanted Congress to replace them if the court had struck them down. But Republicans, who control both chambers of Congress, had not coalesced around a viable plan to help the millions of Americans who risked losing their insurance if the court swung against the law.

There’s a lot of talk on political Twitter about whether Chief Justice John Roberts is proving himself a closet liberal. But the Obamacare decision today is a very conservative decision, legally speaking.

On the Affordable Care Act, Roberts simply declined to reinterpret a sweeping piece of legislation from the bench. This is the kind of judicial restraint — if a decision this obvious even deserves the moniker “restraint” — that conservatives used to call for in judges.

The Supreme Court just upheld a key part of the Affordable Care Act in the case King v. Burwell, allowing 6.4 million people to keep tax subsidies they were getting to buy health insurance on the federal exchange on Healthcare.gov. Justice Antonin Scalia is pissed. The dissent he wrote in the case includes the line:

In case you think we’re making this up, here it is in the text of the dissent:

1) This wasn’t a “win for Obamacare.” Obamacare is words written on paper. This was a win for the more than 6 million people who will keep their health insurance. It’s a win for parents who can be sure their children can go to the doctor, and for minimum-wage workers who can call an ambulance without worrying about debt. Basic health security for millions of people was on the line in this decision. Everything else was secondary to that.

2) This was also a win for common sense, and for judicial restraint. On some level, what’s most surprising about this case isn’t that the Supreme Court upheld the subsidies, but that they ever took the case at all. This was a ridiculous case, based on a ridiculous argument, where the only hope of victory was that the Supreme Court had become an irreversibly partisan institution.

Dissenting in the King v. Burwell case, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia complained that “words no longer have meaning if an Exchange that is not established by a State is ‘established by the state.’” This is an amusing piece of trolling, but the reality is that words have never “had meaning” in the way Scalia thinks.

Individual stringz of letterz r efforts to express meaningful propositions in an intelligible way. To succeed at this mission does not require the youse of any particular rite series of words and, in fact, a sntnce fll of gibberish cn B prfctly comprehensible and meaningful 2 an intelligent reader. To understand a phrse or paragraf or an entire txt rekwires the use of human understanding and contextual infrmation not just a dctionry.

The challenge to Obamacare in King v. Burwell always seemed rather strange to health policy wonks. The plantiffs focused on just four words in the law to argue that Obamacare’s drafters didn’t want subsidies to be provided in states using federal insurance exchanges, even though when combined with other provisions of the law, this would wreak havoc on those states’ insurance markets.

It was unclear why anyone would have wanted the law to do such a thing — particularly when everyone involved with the drafting of the law said they had no such intention.

Hospital stock prices surged on news that the Supreme Court would uphold Obamacare’s insurance subsidies:

Hospitals arguably had more at stake in the King v. Burwell ruling than other parts of the health-care system. When more people have health insurance, that means fewer unpaid hospital bills — and more revenue coming in for health-care providers.

“Congress passed the Affordable Care Act to improve health insurance markets, not to destroy them,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in the court’s opinion.

The decision means that the Affordable Care Act stands unchanged and that the government can continue subsidizing coverage for millions of Americans.

You can read all of Chief Justice John Roberts’ opinion upholding health insurance subsidies for the 34 states with federal Obamacare exchanges. But you can also understand it by reading this one sentence:

It’s a simple argument: the point of Obamacare is to make health insurance markets work better and cover more people. To change the law so as to make them work worse, Roberts concluded, is to betray its clear intent.

The Supreme Court upheld Obamacare’s subsidies in King v. Burwell, continuing financial subsidies for 6.4 million Americans.

If the challengers had won, it would have thrown the health-care law into chaos. But the White House prevailing marks something equally momentous: President Obama’s signature legislative accomplishment is actually, really, definitely here to stay.

If the Supreme Court rules against Obamacare, will Republicans repair the damage? Ramesh Ponnuru, one of the right’s smartest health-care voices, thinks so. “I’d bet that Obamacare is going to survive this challenge — whatever the court decides — pretty much unscathed,” he writes.

The question here comes down to Congress: If they want to fix Obamacare, they can do it easily. If they want to do nothing, well, it’s Congress — they can do that too.

The White House has said that if the court strikes down subsidies for Americans outside the state exchanges, there is nothing they can do for those 6.4 million people.

But health-care experts say they may have just found a way: loosen the definition of what counts as a “state-based” marketplace.

The Supreme Court will rule this month on King v. Burwell, a case arguing that Obamacare’s insurance subsidies are illegal. A decision in favor of President Obama’s health-care law could solidify its place in history — but one against would throw the insurance expansion into chaos.

Up until the ruling, Vox will collect the most important news, commentary, and thoughts on what could happen — and what it means for the Affordable Care Act.

On Thursday — or maybe Friday, or maybe Monday — the Supreme Court will rule on King v. Burwell, a case that could rip insurance subsidies from the 34 states using Obamacare’s federal insurance marketplace. If you need a primer on the case, head to our King v. Burwell explainer. But if you want a depressingly telling anecdote about the case, look no further than the New York Times’s interview with plaintiff David M. King:

So the King v. Burwell case that could rip subsidies from 6.4 million people is being brought by a plaintiff who already has government-provided health care and who has been fooled by his lawyers into believing there’s some mystery plan that will ensure no one ends up uninsured because of this lawsuit.

The Supreme Court will rule this month on King v. Burwell, a case arguing that Obamacare’s insurance subsidies are illegal. A decision in favor of President Obama’s health-care law could solidify its place in history — but one against would throw the insurance expansion into chaos.

Up until the ruling, Vox will collect the most important news, commentary, and thoughts on what could happen — and what it means for the Affordable Care Act.

LIVE Q&A at 12 p.m. EST: Have questions about King v. Burwell? We have answers! Leave your questions for Vox’s Sarah Kliff below in the comments, and she’ll be here answering them from 12 - 1 p.m. EST on Monday, June 22. Fire away!

The Supreme Court will rule this month on King v. Burwell, a case arguing that Obamacare’s insurance subsidies are illegal. A decision in favor of President Obama’s health-care law could solidify its place in history — but one against would throw the insurance expansion into chaos.

The Supreme Court could rule against the Affordable Care Act in the next few days, creating a huge mess for millions of Obamacare enrollees, with premiums more than doubling and many dropping coverage.

Don’t expect anyone to rush to fix it.

If you want to understand the Obama administration’s plan to save Obamacare in the Supreme Court, you have to understand Chevron deference.

The White House has leaned heavily on this precedent in legal briefs and oral arguments; the Supreme Court brief itself mentions it more than a dozen times. The administration argues that the language about Obamacare subsidies is ambiguous — and that under Chevron deference, the Treasury Department ought to get to decide how to interpret the guidance.

The Supreme Court will rule this month on King v. Burwell, a case arguing that Obamacare’s insurance subsidies are illegal. A decision in favor of President Obama’s health-care law could solidify its place in history — but one against would throw the insurance expansion into chaos.

Up until the ruling, Vox will collect the most important news, commentary, and thoughts on what could happen — and what it means for the Affordable Care Act.

What happens if the Supreme Court rules for the plaintiffs in King v. Burwell? The simplest answer is that Republican states get screwed.

You wouldn’t know that from the political debate, which pits Democrats who fear a ruling for the plaintiffs against Republicans who welcome one. But both sides are operating under an outdated model of the politics around Obamacare — one in which the law’s survival remains an open question.

Marilyn Schramm is thinking about moving.

She is a 63-year-old retiree who lives in Texas, and since November 2013 she’s purchased health insurance through HealthCare.gov. She has a policy that costs about $800 per month. Schramm, who earns $28,000 from her pension, pays about half the cost, and the federal government covers the rest with a subsidy.