King v. Burwell…A Cowardly Court

Yesterday the President inaccurately summed up King v. Burwell and the Affordable Care Act as legislation heralding in an age of a US “RIGHT TO HEALTHCARE,” that hardly raised an eyebrow in the world of reality so neatly ignored by this President. But we didn’t get here simply because of the President’s lone wolf approach to rule, after all there are three branches of government. Certainly dysfunctional Congress and a cowardly Supreme Court have fertilized the ground for the President to do what he wants. King v. Burwell is no exception to this trend.

In interpreting the law the Supreme Court wrote that it was upholding premium assistance in part because to rule otherwise would “…destabilize the individual insurance market in any State with a Federal Exchange."* Doesn’t sound much like a legal argument to you? That’s because it isn’t.

In a stunningly lazy and sloppy and downright cowardly decision (naturally my OPINION), the Supreme Court did little but do what it was asked to do in the first place…Uphold premium assistance as a NATIONAL RULE in the face of two States that ‘interpreted’ the issue differently, though all sides agreed that the language allowing for premium assistance was there in black and white...available to individuals who enrolled in Obamacare through an exchange established under 1311 of the PPACA.

What is eye-catching is the regurgitation by Justice Roberts of the nonlegal partisan and often inaccurate language used by Obamacare fans to justify a Supreme Court decision. Not only did the Chief Justice regurgitate the death spiral language of the overly dramatic storytellers but he actually bought into the cheap “typo” claim allowing the government to avoid its own law by saying—“We said it but we didn’t mean to say it” as the Chief Justice wrote, “It is implausible that Congress meant the Act to operate in this manner.”*

But there are real reasons that the Court sacrificed credibility, thoughtfulness and allegiance to law. First, the Court obviously didn’t want to hear the case but had to in the face of States interpreting the law differently. They were the big daddy the bickering states had to go to in order to say who was right. So, the Supreme Court heard the case…Just barely, obviously beginning with a goal, to uphold the payments and then making things “fit” to their own satisfaction.

But the second reason reveals the true pettiness and self-interest of the Court. We all recall that the Court had held up the individual mandate, forcing people to purchase health insurance or else pay a penalty or fine, oh yeah, that’s right, a “TAX” on people who dare to go against the government and its vision of forcing healthcare products on us all. The plaintiffs in the case were trying to reject government money that would REDUCE their premium COSTS so that the cost of health insurance would be cheap enough (less than 8 percent of their salaries) making it necessary for them to buy insurance or face the individual mandate tax.

Without the forced acceptance of government handout money in the form of premium assistance, the plaintiffs could not have been forced to buy insurance or pay the tax because they would have been eligible for one of the many EXEMPTIONS under the ACA which primarily allows that poor folk don’t have to buy health insurance.

In a real way, the Supreme Court was pissed, just like any other bully that a court would dare second-guess their vision by being more astute legally than they were and with a full knowledge of the ACA and its provisions would realize that the Act treated states and their residents that bought in differently from states and their residents that didn’t.

The Supreme Court said YES to individual mandate and come hell or high water they were not going to render a decision that added yet another possible exemption to compliance, especially this one that jeopardizes penalty dollars feeding the Federal government’s growing financial needs to pay for the administration, perpetuation and sheer busy-work of the ACA.

So what does this really mean for US citizens? It means that the government will continue doing whatever it wants. Today the IRS wants to pay more premium assistance because otherwise ENROLLMENT, the lackluster final remaining criteria of success for the government will be even lower than its current numbers that have according to the government never yet met expectations (the CBO, not the Yea for us! propaganda).

But like the ACA itself the King v. Burwell is a symptom of a dysfunctional government that has kowtowed to this President unable to do their jobs leaving a gaping hole for an ambitious and powerful man to use the Presidency as his own Santa wish list.

*Look up the Supreme Court King v. Burwell decision and read it for yourself