Barack Obama owes John Roberts a big steak dinner. Hell, he owes him a whole cow — which, if there’s justice anywhere, Roberts will choke on.
This time, the Chief Justice had help in rescuing a law that never should have passed in the first place and did so only by the skin of its teeth. From USA Today:
Roberts had help … from Justice Anthony Kennedy [a swing vote], who joined in the 6-3 ruling that federal tax credits can be offered to millions of Americans who get insurance on the federal exchange, rather than from their states.
The main thrust of Roberts’s argument is that the members of the high court are “not chosen by the people, and … are not politically accountable to them.” This effectively throws the law back to Congress, which is now tasked with trying to fix it. This is no small challenge. The law, which was passed with the president’s promise that it would reduce family health insurance premiums by $2,500 per year on average, has actually added approximately $3,000 to premiums.
At least Congress will not be caught off-guard with the high court’s decision. As noted earlier this month, GOP leadership in the House was contemplating a stop-gap measure in the event the court ruled in favor of the plaintiff in King v. Burwell by extending the subsidies for 8 million-plus Americans affected. Now the decision has been made for them.
A press release by the State Government Leadership Foundation (SGLF), an advocacy group that focuses on hotbed issues and conservative policies that state government officials must wrestle with, attempts to put a positive spin on the ruling:
Today’s decision will invigorate conservatives to continue pushing for bottom-up, common-sense solutions that will finally fix our broken healthcare system so deeply damaged by ObamaCare.
If you want an idea of who this law is helping — other than Obama, who needs all the help he can get with his “legacy” — consider that the stocks of big insurers, such as Aetna, saw a marked rise in the share per price shortly after the Supreme Court’s decision was announced.
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