Today the Supreme Court handed a victory to the most hated agency of the federal government, the IRS.
The justices voted 6-3 that the IRS can continue to offer subsidies to ObamaCare buyers in all 50 states, contrary to what the Affordable Care Act actually says.
The ruling puts a stamp of approval on the IRS’s leeway to change the health law in order to make it work the way the administration wants. It means more discretion for an agency that has targeted conservative groups, stonewalled congressional investigators, “lost” thousands of official e-mails (and later, conveniently found some of them) and strikes fear in the hearts of Americans.
Changing the health law by fiat is nothing new. The Obama administration has delayed, deleted or distorted dozens of provisions.
Remember the waivers for certain companies and unions? The employer-mandate delays? The changed enrollment periods? The administration says they’re tweaks.
Critics call it lawlessness.
Section 1401 of the Affordable Care Act states unambiguously that ObamaCare buyers will only get subsidies “through an exchange established by the state.”
The subsidies were intended as a carrot to persuade states to establish exchanges. Their residents would feel less of the sting of having to buy the pricey plans. But surprise, only 14 states went along. The others, mostly led by Republican governors, refused.
Late in the game, the administration had to establish the federal healthcare.gov exchange (the one that kept breaking down) to get ObamaCare launched in three-quarters of the states.
Despite warnings from the Congressional Research Service that the text of the law did not permit it, the IRS handed out subsidies in those states, too.
Politically, it was a no-brainer. The president had promised “affordable” care. But without the subsidies, the plans are hugely unaffordable.
Some 87 percent of ObamaCare buyers get subsidies, and pay only about one quarter of the true price, on average. John Q. Taxpayer picks up the rest — about $22 billion this year.
Defending the IRS for playing fast and loose with the law and your money, the administration’s lawyers told the justices that the end justifies the means.
Withdrawing the subsidies, they warned, would cause a “death spiral” in three-quarters of the states, with healthy consumers dropping coverage and only the sick staying in the costly, unsubsidized plans.
All possibly true. But contrary to the law Congress passed.
Even Jonathan Gruber, the notorious loudmouth MIT economist credited with designing the Affordable Care Act, is on video explaining only 20 days after the law was passed that subsidies would only be available in states that set up exchanges. In states that don’t, “your citizens don’t get their tax credits.”
Too bad the justices either didn’t hear that or disregarded it.
The administration’s lawyers lied, insisting no distinction was ever intended between state and federal exchanges.
The court’s majority called the law “ambiguous.” It isn’t.
The majority said the case has “deep ‘economic and political significance.’” That’s the problem. Six of the justices had their eyes more on consequences than constitutionality, and bought the warnings about “death spirals.”
Justice Antonin Scalia, dissenting, lamented that “words no longer have meaning if an Exchange that is not established by a State is ‘established by the State.’”
There’s a lesson to be taken from the constant litigation over this 2,572-page health law. The law’s size and obfuscating language endanger our freedom.
Politicians slip in exemptions for themselves while employers have to spend huge sums to have the law decoded.
And the IRS can claim the law says one thing when it says something different. Who’s to know?
Now the fate of ObamaCare is up to the voters. Since May 1, nearly every poll shows that more than half the public opposes it. Republicans running for president all pledge to repeal it and replace it with something better.
If that happens, don’t let Congress pass another monstrous, unreadable health law. We the people want a health bill in plain, honest English that lawmakers will read before passing and the public can decipher.
Betsy McCaughey is a senior fellow at the London Center for Policy Research.