Breaking: Supreme Court Approves Obamacare Subsidies

Last year, a federal appeals court ruled against the legality of some Obamacare subsidies that were issued to people who bought insurance through HealthCare.gov.

The language in Obamacare actually restricts subsidies to state-run exchanges.

Only 17 states ran their own exchanges. The federal government took over for the states that opted out of operating their own exchanges – and the court’s ruling says that the federal government may not pay subsidies for insurance plans in those states.

The issue found its way to the Supreme Court, which announced its decision on those subsidies today:

From CNBC:

In a major decision, the U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday ruled in a 6-3 decision that the federal subsidies that help nearly 6.4 million people pay for their Obamacare health plans are legal under the Affordable Care Act.

The ruling avoids what many analysts predicted would be a nightmare scenario if the plaintiffs had won: individual plan insurance prices skyrocketing in two-thirds of the United States, and the loss of health coverage for upwards of 8 million people in states served by the federal insurance marketplace HealthCare.gov by next year.

The Supreme Court decision, which was written Chief Justice John Roberts, is a huge victory for the administration of President Barack Obama and his landmark health-reform law, which was designed to significantly reduce the number of Americans without health coverage.

In its ruling in the case known as King v. Burwell, the high court accepted the administration’s argument that the ACA allows federal tax credits to be issued to people who buy health plans through a federally run Obamacare exchange. Joining Roberts in the majority decision were Justices Anthony Kennedy, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotamayor and Elena Kagan.

In addition:

…the Supreme Court’s decision in the HealthCare.gov states also kept in place the so-called “employer mandate,” which requires larger employers to offer affordable health insurance to their workers or pay a fine. The ruling also keeps intact the individual mandate that requires most Americans to have some form of health coverage or pay a tax penalty.

Opponents expressed disagreement with the ruling:

Justice Antonin Scalia wrote an angry dissent, saying the Supreme Court’s pair of decisions over Obamacare will “surely be remembered through the years” as evidence the court does “whatever [it] takes to uphold and assist its favorites.”

The chairman of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wisconsin, called the ruling “incredibly disappointing.”

“Obamacare has never been accepted by the American people,” Johnson said. “The harm that the law inflicts shows that the people were right. Congress must move America past this unaffordable, destructive law.” (source)

Is anyone surprised by this decision? I think we all knew how this was going to go.

Delivered by The Daily Sheeple

We encourage you to share and republish our reports, analyses, breaking news and videos (Click for details).

Contributed by of The Daily Sheeple.