Reason’s Sense of Humor

“So the Supreme Court ruled in favor of handing out subsidies through federal exchanges in King vs. Burwell, once

Obamcare
rtcosmin / Foter / CC BY-NC-SA
again letting the administration snatch victory out of the jaws of defeat.

What is interesting in a quick skimming of Chief Justice John Roberts’ opinion is that he does not deny that the text of the law is thoroughly ambiguous. He also doesn’t deny that administrative agencies — aka the IRS in this case — shouldn’t have the final word in interpreting this ambiguity as per stare decisis considerations. Indeed, he goes out of his way to reject the 4th Circuit Court’s reliance on the Chevron test — the notion that in instances of textual ambiguity, courts must defer to the interpretation of administrative agencies in interpreting a statue — as binding in this case. Why? He notes:

When analyzing an agency’s interpretation of a statute, we often apply the two-step framework announced in Chevron…This approach “is premised on the theory that a statute’s ambiguity constitutes an implicit delegation from Congress to the agency to fill in the statutory gaps…In extraordinary cases, however, there may be reason to hesitate before concluding that Congress has intended such an implicit delegation…This is one of those cases. The tax credits are among the Act’s key reforms, involving billions of dollars in spending each year and affecting the price of health insurance for millions of people. Whether those credits are available on Federal Exchanges is thus a question of deep “economic and political significance” that is central to this statutory scheme; had Congress wished to assign that question to an agency, it surely would have done so expressly.

So if the text is ambiguous and the court can’t defer to administrative agencies, then what should it do? A genuine opponent of judicial activism as conservative justices are supposed to be, would find a way to get Congress to clarify its intent – especially given that most of the legislators who actually wrote the damn thing are still in office. This would have required Roberts to rule in favor of the plaintiffs — which would have effectively invited Congress to clean up its own mess.”

From Reason Magazine

Anyone interested, or concern about the title of this piece, especially the first part. Apparently Shikha Dalmia, had a bad day over at Reason today and perhaps doesn’t control, or express her anger very well. For the life of me, I can’t understand what she has to be upset about. Ha, ha. Maybe she’ll smoke a joint, or something and calm her nerves.

I was just reading Chief Justice John Roberts decision. And he says the ACA has a provision where if states don’t set up their own health care exchanges for health insurance subsidies, the Federal Government will step in and provide people with those tax credits. That is the ballgame in this case. King, in King V Burwell, argued and perhaps not very well, considering they lost 6-3 and lost two Republican votes, that if a state, does not decide to set up a health care exchange, than the people in those states aren’t eligible for the tax credits.

So that’s King V Burwell. King, arguing that the states have to set up their own exchanges for the people in those states to be eligible for the tax credit. Burwell, arguing that the Federal Government can step in and makeup for a state not doing their own exchange. With the Chief Justice, a Republican and Republican appointee, who’ve I disagree with on many occasions, saying the ACA, already has a provision giving the Feds the ability to provide tax credits for health insurance. Even for people who live in states without health insurance exchanges.