On Thursday, the Supreme Court issued an important ruling — one that thwarted conservative efforts to end Obamacare (again).
King v. Burwell, a challenge to the Affordable Care Act that could have eradicated federal subsidies in the 34 states that refused to set up Obamacare exchanges, imperiling about 5 million Americans’ health insurance, lost its attempt to gut the signature law.
Conservatives were certain that they had finally destroyed the evil socialist, Marxist, Nazi, fascist, probably anti-Christian plot to destroy America by making health insurance more affordable for the nation’s most vulnerable — but the Supreme Court did the right thing, and upheld the subsidies that would be necessary to make that happen.
In a 6-3 ruling, SCOTUS determined that the nationwide subsidies are entirely legal:
“Congress passed the Affordable Care Act to improve health insurance markets, not to destroy them,” the court’s majority said in the opinion, which was written by Chief Justice John Roberts. But they acknowledged that “petitioners’ arguments about the plain meaning … are strong.”
The majority opinion cited the law’s “more than a few examples of inartful drafting,” but added, “the context and structure of the Act compel us to depart from what would otherwise be the most natural reading of the pertinent statutory phrase.”
Roberts was joined by the court’s liberal justices, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, as well as by Anthony Kennedy.
“We should start calling this law SCOTUScare,” Scalia wrote in his dissent, an apparent reference to the fact that the Supreme Court has now upheld Obamacare twice. Scalia called the majority’s reading of the law “quite absurd, and the court’s 21 pages of explanation make it no less so.”
The issue was a mere six words of the law, which opponents argued do “not authorize subsidies to make mandated insurance affordable in 34 states.”
“Those words stipulate that for people who cannot afford health coverage, subsidies are available through ‘an exchange established by the state,'” NPR’s Nina Totenberg pointed out in March, adding:
“The government [contended] that those words refer to any exchange, whether it is set up by the state itself or an exchange run for the state by the federal government in accordance with individual state insurance laws and regulations. The challengers [said] the statute means what it says and no more.”
On Thursday, the Supreme Court agreed with the government, sparking what is almost assuredly a sign of the End Times: a flood of conservative tears the likes of which we have never seen — complete with gnashing of teeth, illiterate complaints about “uneducated African-Americans,” whining about socialism, death threats, calls for revolution, and everything else that conservatives would typically say the moment the President so much as fails to hold his own umbrella.
Shortly after Fox News announced the decision, the “news” network’s Facebook page flooded with right-wing outrage:
While this should be the end of the nonsensical debate over Obamacare, Republicans will almost assuredly continue to waste tax dollars in an effort to ensure that Americans are not taken care of. Of course, as one commenter suggested, we could always simplify things by moving to a single-payer system — if we can get past the government “controlling” our healthcare as that commenter claimed.
All in all, this was a win for millions of Americans who depend on subsidies to afford even the most basic health care. Perhaps, now, Republicans will realize that the Affordable Care Act truly is the will of the people — the ones who are able to independently learn to operate a can opener, that is.
