Liberals who aren't taking the
current court challenge to Obamacare seriously risk enabling the healthcare law's demise, writes Sam Baker in
National Journal.
"For the second time, there's a very real chance that the (Supreme) Court could tear the Affordable Care Act apart. And, also for the second time, some liberals are making the mistake of treating that existential threat like it's a joke," Baker writes.
He quotes Simon Lazarus of the liberal Constitutional Accountability Center, who says supporters of the Affordable Care Act lost the PR battle in 2012 over the individual mandate because they treated it as an open-and-shut case and underestimated how much damage it could do.
The latest case takes aim at the ACA's subsidies for people below certain incomes. Opponents say the law provides for subsidies only for people who buy insurance through state-run exchanges.
Most states' successfully challenged the mandate that they set up their own exchanges. So residents in those states have had to use the federal exchange, run through HealthCare.org.
Obamacare opponents noticed that the wording in the laws specified state-run exchanges, therefore nullifying any subsidies paid through the federal exchange. If the court rules in their favor, the ACA would effectively be dead.
The left has said the language in the bill is a mere "drafting error" and nothing to be concerned about. Baker says that argument could backfire since it could give the court's conservative justices room to say they recognize the error, but are powerless to change it.
Baker notes, however, that strict constructionist justices, such as Antonin Scalia, have argued that an entire law should be taken altogether to form context. He said that such a reading makes the "established by the State" line less clear and therefore more likely to be interpreted in supporters' favor.
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