Posted on 08/08/2014 6:34:26 PM PDT by markomalley
Last week, the State of Oklahoma filed a motion to inform a federal judge of “newly-discovered facts” in the state’s challenge of Obamacare. These new facts were two audio tapes in December 2012 of Jonathan Gruber, the Obamacare Architect, stating that Obamacare subsidies are tied only to the existence of state exchanges and not a federal exchange.
Oklahoma’s motion related primarily to these two video tapes and was filed shortly after the two tapes surfaced. On Wednesday, the Department of Health and Human Services (“HHS”) filed its opposition to the Oklahoma motion. The HHS response appropriately limited its opposition to the State of Oklahoma’s motion -- the two tapes. However, logically HHS should have taken into consideration all the new evidence that surfaced since the State filed its motion such that HHS didn’t undermine its own arguments. Specifically, HHS makes eight arguments in its opposition which are negated by the new facts that have been uncovered in the last 10 days.
1. Not all of Gruber’s statements were “Off-the-cuff” – The HHS opposition argues: “As Professor Gruber has clarified, the January 2012 statements on which the plaintiff relies were made ‘off-the-cuff,’ and they do not reflect his understanding of Congress’s intent.”
However, as Breitbart News reported, three separate publications were uncovered whereby Gruber writes about subsidies and state based exchanges including an article for the New England Journal of Medicine in December 2009 titled “Getting the Facts Straight on Health Care Reform.” In the article, Gruber wrote, “The primary role of the government in this reform is as a financier of the tax credits that individuals will use to purchase health insurance from private companies through state-organized exchanges.”
(Excerpt) Read more at breitbart.com ...
No 8 is the key.
Baucus
23 September 2009
Intent defined.
I wish this would get to SCOTUS quickly! It would be nice to put even more pressure on the Democrats prior to November. Would SCOTUS work on a quick “emergency” decision?
The HHS IT staff is furiously deleting emails of senior management, and trashing their hard drives, as we type.
Obamacare is a federal law which mandates everyone stand in the corner of a round room.
Isn’t a key indicator here how the CBO scored the bill and how Nancy et al instructed them to keep the cost under $1T?
Intent? Since when is a good defense that it is "intent" that rules and not law?
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