SCOTUS Will Take Up Obamacare Again

I don’t know what to make of this. The Supreme Court was not yet on the hook to take up a challenge to Obamacare’s subsidies. But it has taken up that challenge anyway.

The U.S. Supreme Court agreed to consider a challenge to the subsidies that are a linchpin of President Barack Obama’s health-care overhaul, accepting a case that suddenly puts the law under a new legal cloud.

Two years after upholding much of the law by a single vote, the justices today said they will hear a Republican-backed appeal targeting tax credits that have helped more than 4 million people afford insurance.

Dontcha love the media? They hardly ever mention the millions who lost their insurance thanks to Obamacare, and the millions whose insurances are being jacked up because of it, and all the job loss and chaos it has created. They tilt to focus on the Obama administration’s talking points.

A ruling blocking those credits might unravel the Affordable Care Act, making other provisions ineffective and potentially destabilizing insurance markets in much of the country. The high court’s decision to hear the case comes days before the start of the law’s second open-enrollment season. A decision will come by June.

I’m sure that readers here are familiar with all this. The plain language of the Obamacare law stipulates that the taxpayer-funded subsidies are only available in states that created their own Obamacare exchanges. Many states elected not to do that, but the subsidies are being paid anyway. That’s at the heart of this challenge.