There’s already been one federal judge who was ruled “of course they meant that to apply to the federal exchange as well”.
And he’s absolutely wrong.
I don’t have references, but I distinctly remember that, in order to get the CBO cost number under the magic $1T mark, one of the modifications to the bill was to not provide subsidies for the federal exchange, assuming (hoping) that the states would all run their own exchanges. Or perhaps they intended to change it after the fact, once the numbers no longer mattered, but by then, they didn’t have the votes.
In any event, Congress intentionally excluded the federal exchange from using subsidies, and the IRS regulations and the lower court ruling violate both the law as written and contemporaneous information regarding Congress’ intent.
They may have seen a likely 14th Amendment equal protections challenge that would, in a happy coincidence, result in the Courts ruling that the Federal exchanges must provide subsidies as well.
IOW they cunningly crafted the bill so it would produce an “acceptable” CBO score but would quickly be rendered moot by judicial fiat.
So like the saying goes, they didn’t really lie. It’s just that the truth changed.
It doesn’t matter that the judge was wrong. An EO is an EO, and (effectively) supercedes all written law. That is what you need to really undestand.
There’s already been one federal judge who was ruled “of course they meant that to apply to the federal exchange as well”.
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as Rush would say “Words mean something”
I understand the subsidies to state exchanges ends after 3 years
‘Meant’ and ‘absolutely stated in the law’ are two VERY much different things; the judge should be buh-bye by now.
Even the States have no cajones to stand up to the Fed. leviathan