Posted on 08/26/2014 1:10:26 AM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
When a federal appeals court ruled last month that a seemingly arcane wording flaw in the Affordable Care Act should invalidate a central part of the law, many of those who drafted the statute five years ago reacted with shock and anger..
In 2009, they had spent months piecing together a compromise that sought to create a national system of subsidized insurance but one run by the states. Now, they fear their work could be undone by what some call a "drafting error" and others portray as a political miscalculation.
The judges from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit based their ruling on language saying that subsidies would be offered for health policies bought through an "exchange established by the state."
That wording meant only marketplaces established by 14 states, including California, would qualify, the three-judge panel ruled; 5 million people in 36 states where consumers used the federal government's exchange should not get subsidies.
(Another federal appeals court panel, in Virginia, took the opposite view in a ruling issued the same day. Until the litigation is over, subsidies are continuing in all states.)
The ruling seems likely to propel Obamacare once more before the Supreme Court, where opponents came within a single vote of overturning the law in 2012.
That prospect has sparked an intense debate over how the disputed language ended up in the law....
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
Spot ON.
Bump
There is no debate about it at all.
The language was changed to remove subsidies for Federal exchanges because if it wasn't changed the law would not have passed.
That being the case, a court decision that this fact is irrelevant would be - revolutionary.
“When a federal appeals court ruled last month that a seemingly arcane wording flaw in the Affordable Care Act should invalidate a central part of the law...........”
Odumbo simply revises the law on his own”.
There, finished it.
We live in the Age of Distrust, just like you see in the 3rd World.
People aren’t outraged, because people today fail to understand how the Constitution set up how laws were supposed to be passed.
They think the president can whip out his pen & make a law.
Bttt
Bttt
Exactly Right!
And there are at least 2 audio recordings of the writer explaining his intent to large groups.
If the writer of this section said this publicly, and it is documented that he said it, this fact should be used to nullify any argument that the wording doesn't capture the intent.
Great examples!
By the LA Times standards the Dred Scott Decision was a “glitch” that ended up with 600,000 dead American military in four years and untold suffering of the civilian population.
Another so called glitch is that Muslims are exempt. The law was written as intended.
But certain standard have to apply that are not met here.
First, the actual language of the law is very specific. Secondly, and most importantly, there is evidence that legislators considered adding the "missing" language. The general principles of statutory interpretation include that if language is ambiguous (which it isn't in this case anyway) and Congress considered a particular interpretation but explicitly did not include it, that they therefore meant to not include it and it should not be construed otherwise.
There is no way for a judge to rule that the "intent" is to provide a subsidy through a federal exchange, despite being in stark contrast to the actual language of the bill, without completely undermining the legal system. Oh, some will try, but I wonder if they realize how much damage they are doing to their own branch of the government in the pursuit of naked partisan politics.
‘They think the president can whip out his pen & make a law’
This President does all the time. Who is going to stop him?
Yep, a century of government schooling has allowed government fooling.
Our country is becoming too dumb to care to stop him. :/
It seems a multitude of issues should “doom” obamacare, but nothing ever does, then again, we are not in America anymore.
I don’t see anything in the future to turn things around, except...Revolution Now!
"And if all others accepted the lie which the Party imposed -if all records told the same tale then the lie passed into history and became truth. 'Who controls the past,' ran the Party slogan, 'controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.' And yet the past, though of its nature alterable, never had been altered. Whatever was true now was true from everlasting to everlasting. It was quite simple. All that was needed was an unending series of victories over your own memory. 'Reality control', they called it: in Newspeak, 'doublethink'."
The purpose of that phrase in the ObamaCare Law is and always has been merely a typographic error. The author misspoke repeatedly when he said otherwise. The Ministry of Truth has spoken on this topic, and the past is now what it always has been; newspapers and video will shortly be updated to match the blueprint for reality that George Orwell's 1984 provided to our Big Brother.
To late for that, already been done. Roberts ruled the ACA was a tax in spite of the feds argument that it emphatically was not a tax, but a fee.
Exactly correct. The statute is crystal clear and, as you say, is exactly as intended.
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