Legal Geek No. 47: Obamacare Lives (Again)

Welcome back to Legal Geek. This week, we review one of the two highlight decisions of this Supreme Court term, the healthcare decision in King vs. Burwell issued earlier this week, including a dissent that is one for the ages.

https://archive.org/details/LegalGeekEp47

For the second time, a challenge to the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, has reached the Supreme Court. Also for the second time, the administration earned a big victory against challengers to the healthcare law.

No matter what side of the healthcare debate you fall on, two things are notable about this decision:

First, a 6-3 majority of the Court did not stop as expected at providing deference to an IRS rulemaking decision to allow for federal tax subsidies for insurance purchasers buying on federal and state insurance exchanges; instead, the majority deemed that this is an issue of deep economic and political significance that should not be left to mere IRS rulemaking, which could be overturned by another administration later.

In other words, the Court decided that the correct reading of the legislative intent of the law must absolutely mandate that subsidies be made available to consumers in all 50 states, regardless of whether a state sets up an insurance exchange or relies solely on federal exchanges. Even though this holding is inconsistent with the way the law actually reads, the decision has bolstered this potential weak point in the healthcare law and has ensured that the critical financial subsidy backing portion of the law works for everyone.

This is yet another case where the more liberal mindset of legislative intent duked it out with the more conservative mindset of strict interpretation of laws as written. This time, the legislative intent won, but Congress and the Obama administration should be happy because the law was not as carefully drafted as it could have been to avoid such weak points, thereby leaving it open to the type of ideological debate common to many Supreme Court decisions.

The second notable part of this decision is the scathing dissent from Justice Scalia, who is a staunch supporter of strict constructionist law interpretation. One can immediately understand why he's not amused that a law that reads one way is being interpreted to mean something wholly different by the majority.

His dissent is worth a read for entertainment value, but here are some highlights. He says words no longer have meaning if an exchange that is not established by a State is interpreted to be covered by "established by the state." He characterizes the majority opinion as interpretive jiggery-pokery and PURE APPLESAUCE at different points. Yes, applesauce. He then caps the dissent by observing that the Court rewriting the law to fix it so that tax credits apply everywhere should make people start calling the law SCOTUScare instead of Obamacare.

Bottom Line: With two challenges now defeated, Obamacare appears to remain the signature achievement of the Obama presidency, and one that will not go away anytime soon.

----------------------------------

Thanks for reading. Please provide feedback and legal-themed questions as segment suggestions to me on Twitter @BuckeyeFitzy