Editorial: Obamacare still ailing

By Herald Staff19 hours ago

A federal appeals court panel yesterday came to the astonishing conclusion that laws duly-enacted by Congress and signed into law by the president should actually be followed as written. When those laws as written represent an inconvenience to President Obama, of course, he has simply reinterpreted them to his liking.

In a 2-1 decision a D.C. Court of Appeals panel agreed with a group of small business owners who had argued that the Affordable Care Act as written restricts premium subsidies to consumers who are enrolled in health care plans that are sold through state-run exchanges - and not through the federal exchange.

Obamacare supporters originally pictured all 50 states running their own exchanges - and the wording in the law reflected that, limiting taxpayer subsidies to consumers enrolled through an exchange "established by the state."

But 36 states didn't bother setting up their own exchanges, either because of objections to the law or because they simply wanted the feds to handle it. So with the subsidies for millions of people at risk the IRS effectively swept aside those four words ("established by the state") and presto, via regulation those enrolled through the federal exchange were made eligible.

Hours after the D.C. ruling a second appeals court panel in Virginia reached the opposite conclusion - essentially ruling that, despite those four words, everyone knew what Congress was trying to do when it expanded subsidies for health coverage.

So the administration will appeal the D.C. ruling, but it remains in the pitiable position of having to insist that the law does not actually mean what it says it means. And the fault for all of this confusion lies directly at the feet of President Obama and those members of his team who reassure him that he needn't bother going to Congress when he has the public interest on his side.