Serious New Problem Found in Obamacare Law: Only State Run Exchanges Can Offer Subsidies

Conservativerefocus ^ | October 26, 2013 | Barry Secrest

[NYer]

Although we've heard of many problems coming to light, this particular problem could unravel the entire ACA plan ---and it's written into the law of the land.

Pay very close attention to this one--the law, as written, cannot be changed without Congressional approval. The Federal subsidies are the only way the coverage becomes affordable except that 36 states are not offering a state run exchange.

[Venturer]

The Congress will take care of this , they will change the law. That is if Obama doesn’t decide to change it himself.

[ken5050]

Good morning!!

"..the law, as written,cannot be changed without Congressional approval.."

As if a little detail like that has ever stopped Zero. He'll act, House Republicans will file a lawsuit, and 3 years from now the Supremes will find in their favor..

[markomalley]

…That is if Obama doesn’t decide to change it himself.

Exactly. They will just publish a note buried in the Federal Register and...boom...they will publish a regulation in the CFR that will make the change.

And our "fearless leaders" in Congress will simply remain silent (after all, they don't want to be labeled as "racist")

[silverleaf]

wbat difference does it make?

the ONLY thing driving the obamites is is raising taxes (or fees, choose your term) on the “middle class” (anyone who owns anything) and redistributing the money to favored cronies and some scraps to the “underserved” who now get free birf control

[Artie]

Sounds like Pelosi will get a new assignment very soon.

[tbpiper]

Defenders of the law say the courts are being used as part of the political campaign against the law.

Apparently the shoe is just as uncomfortable on the other foot.

[USS Alaska]

"They are betting on getting five votes at the Supreme Court," Lazarus said. "I don't think it will happen."

Is jonny boi one of those five? I thought Lazarus was dead.

[Liz]

ONCE HE WAS BLIND NOW HE CAN SEE---Obombo said he's seen the light-----searching now to find "the best and brightest" to fix the abominable web site.

=============================================

OBOMBO'S GOT A SECRET--The White House has promised a "tech surge" of the "best and the brightest," from Silicon Valley and beyond. But nobody knows, or is telling anyone, who those people actually are.

Contractors grilled at a congressional hearing this week wouldn't name names, and several tech executives questioned yesterday said they had no inside information on the makeup of the government's emergency coder team. NOT reassuring that the floundering admin announced a former White House budget director is now the abominable web site's "fixer."

So who were the dumb clucks that pocketed the $billion tax dollars for the initial botched rollout? O blamed everybody but his sainted grandmother for the massive screwup.

IT GETS BETTER---NY MAGAZINE REPORT Silicon Valley techies say the botched healthcare.gov rollout was emblematic of what's called "state-of-the-art incompetence" .......the dated, old-school approach to the site's development, which relies on a management system known as the "waterfall model," and whose back-end database appears to run on Oracle software, had all but ensured it would run over-budget, late, and riddled with technical problems.

You could have taken any SV engineer and asked them, 'I have a friend — don't mention the government — who's thinking about a five-year, $100 million Oracle installation, and they've hired an outsourced contractor (crony-ridden CGI-Canada)to build it for them. It's going to be proprietary, hosted in their own data center, Oracle-based, with waterfall management."

"What are the odds that it's working on Day One of the rollout?" And everyone in SV will tell you: zero percent.

Silicon Valley's emerging suspicion of government, see the botched rollout as symptomatic of the government's ham-fisted approach to technology.

The healthcare.gov site is "only the latest episode in a string of information technology debacles by the federal government," wrote Clay Johnson and Harper Reed, two programmers with political pasts (Johnson was Howard Dean's lead programmer in 2004; Reed was the brain behind Obama's 2012 digital campaign) in a Times op-ed.

The pair went on: This latest failure is frustrating for us to watch ... We must find a fix to the federal procurement process that spares the government’s technology projects from the self-inflicted wounds of signing big contracts whose terms repeatedly and spectacularly go unmet.

[InterceptPoint]

The Congress will take care of this , they will change the law. That is if Obama doesn’t decide to change it himself.

Not a chance. If it is "fixed", a perfect term by the way, it will be by this guy:

[Tonytitan]

Sounds like Pelosi will get a new assignment very soon.

Yeah, since we had to pass the law to find out that this little jewel was in it.

[Junk Silver]

This is why it would have been helpful to have actual Republican leadership in Congress these past few years as opposed to the spineless drunkards currently in charge.

If we had at least tried to put up a fight each time Obama unconstitutionally modified this law there might be some precedent to prevent him from just crossing out the offending language and issuing a royal edict to sort this out.

[arthurus]

Given the kenyan’s unprotested, uncontested, and massive innovations so far, the actual wording of the law probably is irrelevant to its application. The kenyan will fix it it with a proclamation.

[arthurus]

, and 3 years from now the Supremes will find in their favor..

Roberts will declare it all a tax and thus anything goes.

[arthurus]

Sounds like Pelosi will get a new assignment very soon.

She might make a pretty good school bus driver.

[sickoflibs]

RE :”The Affordable Care Act proposes to make health insurance affordable to millions of low-income Americans by offering them tax credits to help cover the cost. To receive the credit, the law twice says they must buy insurance “through an exchange established by the state.”
But 36 states have decided against opening exchanges for now. Although the law permits the federal government to open exchanges instead, it does not say tax credits may be given to those who buy insurance through a federally run exchange.
Apparently no one noticed this when the long and complicated bill worked its way through the House and Senate. Last year, however, the Internal Revenue Servicetried to remedy it by putting out a regulation that redefined “exchange” to include a “federally facilitated exchange.” This is “consistent with the language, purpose and structure … of the act as a whole,” the Treasury Department said.
But critics of the law have seized on the glitch. They have filed four lawsuits that urge judges to rule the Obama administration must abide by the strict wording of the law, even if doing so dismantles it in nearly two-thirds of the states. And the Obama administration has no hope of repairing the glitch by legislation as long as the Republicans control the House.”

OH-OH. More trouble for SS obamacare.

[Liz]

MUSIC TO MY TENDER EARS ....critics of the law have seized on another of Opoop/Care glitches. They have filed four lawsuits that urge judges to rule the Obama admin must abide by the strict wording of the law, even if doing so dismantles it in nearly two-thirds of the states.....the Obama admin has no hope of repairing the glitch by legislation as long as the Republicans control the House”........

[nathanbedford]

Many of us are on record about a year before the Supreme Court decision expressing pessimism over the result only because we have become cynical about how our judicial system malfunctions. We have no doubt that the Supreme Court works backwards to rationalize the desired result.

Therefore, it is indeed not easy to predict the Supreme Court will simply uphold the law as written, after all the Chief Justice had no difficulty rewriting the law to find that it was a tax, in order to get to a predetermined result.

With all of that said, I think the right to argue the case is to take the high road and declare that those states which want to participate are free to participate and they have exercised their democratic choice not to participate. In effect, by extending the subsidies to nonparticipating states, the court is rewriting the law once again. It is far more equitable to return the matter to the people and let them vote their choice and those states that want to participate, can participate.

God knows what this court will do, but we should keep hammering at the door until one of these five justices, perhaps the Chief Justice himself, decides that it is politically expedient to relieve the Democrats of the cross upon which they have nailed themselves.

[IncPen]

ping

[Tonytitan]

Someone help me out 'cause I'm really conflicted here. Do we:

a) Pursue this with all dispatch in an effort to shut this monstrosity down before it does any more damage than it already has, which, as the article describes, would occur somewhere during the appellate process as the plaintiffs would invariably ask for an injunction against its implementation until the SCOTUS sorts this out,

or:

b) Continue to roll with the disastrous website and rollout status quo and watch the effect it's having on the reelection of red state Democrap Senators as they are clearly in the crosshairs of this mess and are trying to pause this thing until after NOV 2014. These lawsuits could give them the out that they are looking for to save their jobs.