In King v. Burwell, there’s more at stake than the payment of premium assistance and cost-sharing subsidies to individuals enrolling in exchange plans through a “federally facilitated exchange.” This is lost amid the arrogant moral lectures we’re exposed to as Democrats continually attempt to expand or contract or delay or adjust the provisions of THEIR DARLING, the Affordable Care Act.
In King v. Burwell, Democrats are arguing against their own darling law, the ACA and are attempting to stretch the language of section 1401 of that law that includes IRS 36B limiting the availability of premium assistance and cost-sharing payments to individuals who enroll in exchange plans through exchanges established by a state under section 1311 of the Affordable Care Act.
They are arguing, “Even though this is what it says, this is what we meant.” Using the mammoth grant of federal government authority (to HHS specifically) to oversee the implementation of the Affordable Care Act, this law of all laws according to its Democratic fans, the Democrats are changing the very nature of the law to expand the contingency provision of federal authority in instances where states fail to establish OR implement under 1321 of the Act to create a law that essentially authorizes not only the oversight of exchanges but the creation of a FEDERAL EXCHANGE, never anticipated and certainly NEVER MENTIONED in the law.
Unable to argue meaningfully that the ACA if nothing else gives textual commitment to state authority within an umbrella of federal OVERSIGHT, the often dishonest Obamacare reporter fans have instead tried to villainize anyone who objects to the loosey-goosey Democratic compliance with a law of their own creation, their precious Affordable Care Act.
Yet their argument is with their own Act, not the people who notice their failure to comply with that Act who are characterized as an amorphous group of morally corrupt “conservatives.” This should by now be a transparent effort to CHANGE the issue to one of Democrats versus Conservatives rather than the true conflict between Democrats and THEIR LAW regarding paying premium assistance and cost-sharing subsidies to residents enrolled in plans through exchanges established by the state under section 1311 of the Act.
The risks of this federal government implementing Obamacare as a suggestion, following the law where convenient, discarding it when it’s not, leaves consumers in far more peril of what might yet happen under Obamacare than implementing the law as enacted because the law will remain forever susceptible to sudden changes by governmental agencies that bypass lawmaking bodies and the people they represent creating an unstable, unpredictable environment outside even a loose patriotic commitment to American ideas of governmental checks and balances.
This is what King v. Burwell represents. Democratic hubris that dismisses process for convenience or permits workaround loopholes for federal government actions outside of the law which today SEEM so kind-hearted to consumers who want their money, not only prevent needed legal changes to the law but open the door for consumers to be vulnerable to the whim and whimsy of any federal government manipulation of the law for any reason.
In this way Obamacare is typical of this presidency as evidence of what I believe is a dangerous shift of federal governmental attitude to stretch federal power and to outsmart federal legislation (even its own, like Obamacare) and to discard historical custom in order to do what they want.
You can read Jeffrey Young, (Huffington Post, 4/22/2015, Conservatives Argue The Obamacare Lawsuit Won't Be So Bad After All. That's Nonsense.) claiming with false compassion that if the Supreme Court decides that premium assistance is NOT paid as it’s currently being paid by the government that people will lose federal entitlement payments.
For me, Mr. Young makes the typical idiotic Obamacare-fan argument that even if people are wrongfully getting paid money we should continue to do it. It’s been used before when in its “discretion” the government suspended verification processes regarding eligibility for federal money under Obamacare and wrongfully paid money to individuals who had NOT provided necessary documentation. (See, “Losing Obamacare They Never Should Have Gotten,” 9/16/2014).
When the law is no more than a suggestion (as it will be if King v. Burwell upholds premium assistance for the mythical Federal Exchange enrollees) it creates opportunity for extra-legal results that also work to consumers’ detriment. Expanding the extra-legal authority of the federal government to fudge, change, and alter Obamacare removes the ever-weakening barriers to a government that can do anything with impunity.
