Save the subsidies
Published July 25, 2014
Editorial by Greensboro News-Record, July 25, 2014.
More than 350,000 North Carolina residents signed up for health insurance under the Affordable Care Act, and about 90 percent qualified for federal subsidies in the form of tax credits.
That assistance is at risk if Tuesday’s ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C., holds up. It said the ACA allows subsidies only for policies accessed through state exchanges.
North Carolina, like most states, refused to create its own exchange for insurance purchases. Residents are served by a federal exchange instead.
The D.C. Circuit Court panel split hairs in its 2-1 ruling. It followed the precise wording of the law and said the Internal Revenue Service was too loose in its interpretation of congressional intent.
Yet, Congress really did intend to offer subsidies to all Americans, not just to those in some states, according to a contrary ruling the same day by a unanimous panel of the Fourth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals in Richmond. That’s the circuit that covers North Carolina.
The case ultimately may be settled by the U.S. Supreme Court, which demonstrated in 2012 that it does not want to overturn the ACA. In the meantime, policies and subsidies are still in effect.
Losing subsidies in North Carolina and some 35 other states could wreck the health care law. Without them, millions of Americans who enrolled in Obamacare might not be able to afford it. Other provisions also depend on the subsidies. This is a critical challenge to the law, and it points to a serious blunder by its authors.
“I think that the better reading of the literal text of the law is probably that Congress limited the tax subsidies to purchases on state exchanges,” SCOTUSblog publisher Tom Goldstein wrote. “But I don’t think you can fairly say that the statute’s meaning is obvious. Instead, like a lot of massive laws that include lots of compromises, it is a bit of a mess.”
Yet, it could be fixed easily. Congress could pass a technical correction, making plain its original intent that subsidies should be made available across the country. Republicans won’t agree to that, preferring to see the program collapse.
North Carolina could provide a remedy for its residents, creating a state exchange and allowing them to sign up again for coverage. Our state’s Republicans won’t do that, for the same reason. They would rather stick to their opposition, even if more than 300,000 residents lose their medical coverage. It’s all about politics.
For now, after Tuesday’s contradictory rulings, the legal question is still open. Politics seems to influence the courts as well. The three judges on the Richmond panel were appointed by Democratic presidents. The two who produced the majority opinion in Washington were nominated by Republican presidents. If the full D.C. court hears the case on appeal, a reversal is expected because most of the court’s judges are Democratic appointees.
It would be refreshing to see a ruling made on the legal merits of a case, rather than politics.
Also helpful would be consideration for what’s really best for the public. The ACA intends to improve access to medical care. Whether the enrollment mechanism is a federal or state exchange shouldn’t matter, and judges should apply common sense to their final decision.
July 25, 2014 at 8:42 am
Richard Bunce says:
Congressional staffers writing the ACA in 2010 were just too vindictive placing this penalty in for any State daring to not operate a Marketplace... now they are caught out with the courts their only hope to ignore language that was in fact clearly intended. These are the same Congressional staffers that placed the 100% of poverty income lower limit on the ACA subsidies for very low income citizens as they would rather have citizens in the substandard Medicaid program rather than the same private healthcare insurance as the rest of their fellow citizens. This is all the making of the proponents of ACA not the opponents of ACA.
