Quote:

 

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2015/02/25/us/politics/ap-us-health-overhaul-risky-politics.html

Both Parties Face Risks as Health Care Law Court Case Nears

Twenty-two out of 24. And 206 to 96.

Those numbers tell much about the political impact of a Supreme Court case in which conservatives and Republicans hope to demolish a pillar of President Barack Obama's health care overhaul. The justices hear arguments next week.

The plaintiffs say subsidies that help millions of Americans afford private insurance are illegal. They say the law limits that aid, paid as tax credits, to people buying coverage from marketplaces established by states, not the federal government.

Democrats disagree. But with a June decision expected, the King v. Burwell case tosses political risks at both parties.

GOP NUMBERS GAME

Only 13 states created their own insurance marketplaces, where people who don't get coverage through work but earn too much to qualify for Medicaid can purchase policies. The federal government's HealthCare.gov serves 37 states, which are mostly Republican-run and decided against establishing their own systems.

Of the 11.4 million people who the Health and Human Services Department says have enrolled for coverage for this year, 8.6 million live in states using HealthCare.gov. Some may eventually not receive policies, but many who do stand to lose them if the plaintiffs win because without federal aid, they couldn't afford coverage.

That pressures Republicans, who uniformly oppose the law, to help the recipients or risk alienating lots of voters.

Here's why. Of the 24 GOP senators facing re-election in 2016, 22 are from states using the federal marketplace. That includes Sens. Marco Rubio of Florida, a possible presidential candidate, whose state saw a national high 1.6 million enroll for coverage; Richard Burr of North Carolina, where 559,000 signed up; and Patrick Toomey of Pennsylvania, where 472,000 enrolled.

No politician enjoys confronting thousands of constituents who have lost something. Nor do they like facing insurance companies, hospitals and others who would suffer if billions in subsidies for millions of customers vanish.

Perhaps a third of those 22 GOP senators face competitive races next year — enough to put Senate control in play. Republicans have a 54-46 Senate majority, including two Democratic-leaning independents.

In addition, in the 37 federal marketplace states, 206 House members are Republicans and 96 are Democrats, including one GOP vacancy. All House seats are up for re-election next year, though continued GOP control is likely.

[...]

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http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Justice/2015/0225/Divided-Supreme-Court-lets-fisherman-off-hook-for-tossing-undersized-grouper

Divided Supreme Court lets fisherman off hook for tossing undersized grouper
In a 5-to-4 decision, the Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, passed in the wake of the Enron scandal and intended to prevent the destruction of documents and financial data, could not be applied to fish.

The US Supreme Court on Wednesday ruled that a federal statute passed to prevent the destruction of documents and financial data cannot also be applied broadly to undersized fish caught by a commercial fisherman.

The court voted 5 to 4 in a case requiring the justices to interpret what Congress meant in a law prohibiting the destruction or concealment of “any… tangible object” with intent to obstruct a federal investigation.

The majority justices agreed with the arguments of John Yates, a commercial fisherman in Florida, who faced up to 20 years in prison under the Sarbanes-Oxley Act for obstructing justice by throwing undersized red grouper back into the sea to prevent federal agents from prosecuting him for violating fish size limits.

In contrast to the obstruction charge, the underlying offense of catching undersized fish carries a few years in prison, at most.

In a plurality decision written by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and joined by Justice Samuel Alito, the court said prosecutors could not use the term “tangible object” in the statute as a catchall to prosecute destruction of any and all types of physical evidence. Instead, the phrase was intended to satisfy a narrower goal – punishing efforts to destroy documents and stored data, the court ruled.

“Tangible object [in the statute], we conclude, is better read to cover only objects one can use to record or preserve information, not all objects in the physical world,” Justice Ginsburg wrote.

In a dissent, Justice Elena Kagan said the court should apply the statute the way Congress wrote it, featuring a broad reading of “tangible object.”

“The plurality searches far and wide for anything – anything – to support its interpretation of [the statute],” Justice Kagan wrote. “But its fishing expedition comes up empty.”

The decision stems from a 2007 encounter in the Gulf of Mexico between Yates and a fisheries officer. The officer boarded the fishing vessel, the Miss Katie, and upon inspection identified 72 undersized red grouper.

The officer issued a citation for harvesting undersized fish and instructed Yates to place the fish in a box and present it to authorities when he returned to port.

After the officer left, Yates instructed his crew to fling the small fish overboard and replace them in the box with larger grouper.

When the Miss Katie returned to port, officials discovered the discrepancy. Federal agents obtained a confession from one of the crew members.

Yates was charged with obstructing a federal investigation by destroying evidence. That federal crime carries a punishment of up to 20 years in prison.

A jury convicted him. Yates filed an appeal.

In charging Yates, federal prosecutors relied on a portion of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, a measure passed in the wake of the Enron scandal. The obstruction section prohibits destruction of “any record, document, or tangible object with the intent to impede or obstruct” any matter within the jurisdiction of the federal government.

The specific question in the case was whether “tangible object” can mean “fish.”

[...]

Quote:

 

State's ObamaCare overcharges 13K

The Washington state ObamaCare exchange says that it withdrew the incorrect amount of money from the bank accounts of 13,000 people.
Some of the people say that more than three times the correct amount was withdrawn for their monthly premium for health insurance.

Richard Onizuka, the CEO of the exchange, told KIRO 7 TV in Seattle that it was working with its contractor, Deloitte, to fix the error affecting people who set up automatic payments and that they would be refunded within 48 hours.

"We apologize to our impacted customers and are working to correct the problem to minimize any further inconvenience they may have already experienced," he said.

Separately, the Obama administration is dealing with an error that gave 800,000 people who signed up for ObamaCare the wrong tax information.

The Treasury Department said Tuesday that people who owe extra in taxes because of the error can keep the money.

Republicans have jumped at the chance to argue that the error shows the law is a burden on the public.

"ObamaCare has consistently lived up to the warnings Republicans have raised: taxes, canceled plans, disruptions, higher costs, etc. Today’s double news dump is just another in a long line of ObamaCare consequences," Don Stewart, a spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said when that error was revealed.

LTC8K6

Feb 26 2015, 07:44 AM

Quote:

 

...The Treasury Department said Tuesday that people who owe extra in taxes because of the error can keep the money...

Quote:

 

http://kaiserhealthnews.org/news/supreme-court-insurance-subsidies-decision-could-trigger-price-spikes/

Supreme Court Insurance Subsidies Decision Could Trigger Price Spikes

Making health insurance available and affordable to millions of people who buy their own coverage was a key goal for backers of the federal health law known as Obamacare.

But if the Supreme Court strikes down the insurance subsidies of millions of Americans who rely on the federal insurance marketplace, it could leave many worse off than they were before the law took effect, say experts.

“The doomsday scenario could materialize and it does impact everyone” — those getting subsidies, as well as those paying the full cost of their plans on the individual market in states using the federal exchange, said Christopher Condeluci, an attorney who worked for Iowa Republican Sen. Charles Grassley on the Senate Finance Committee staff during the drafting of the law.

That’s because millions of consumers likely would drop their policies, which they could no longer afford without subsidies.

Most insurers could not drop plans without giving one-to-three months’ notice. But the companies remaining in the market would likely seek sharp increases in premiums for the following year, anticipating that the consumers most likely to hold onto their plans would be those needing medical care. [Burwell has already changed the rules so insurers may drop plans IMMEDIATELY if the ruling goes as expected.]

One Rand analysis projects that unsubsidized premiums could increase by almost half — an average annual increase of $1,600 for a 40-year-old — and that 70 percent of consumers would cancel their policies.

Those price increases, in turn, would drive more people to drop coverage, spurring further price hikes and potentially leading to what insurance experts call “a market death spiral.”

“It’s not the subsidy market that will fall apart, it’s the whole market” for everyone who doesn’t get job-based insurance coverage, said Robert Laszewski, a consultant for the insurance industry who is no fan of the health law. “There will be millions of Republicans who are not subsidy-eligible who are also going to get screwed.”

[...]

Quote:

 

http://www.wsj.com/articles/more-than-1-million-people-pick-new-health-law-plans-1424893697?mod=rss_US_News

More Than 1 Million People Pick New Health-Law Plans
Obama administration automatically renewed coverage for almost 2 million

About 1.2 million people who bought coverage on HealthCare.gov in 2014 dropped their health plan and picked a new one through the site for 2015, the Obama administration said Wednesday.

The extent of people’s willingness to consider shifting to a different insurance carrier came as a surprise to federal officials, said Andy Slavitt, a former top executive at UnitedHealth Group who is now principal deputy administrator at Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and will become acting administrator on Monday.

“This is a much more active consumer than anybody expected,” Mr. Slavitt said, noting that in other programs such as the federal employees’ health plan, or Medicare prescription drug benefits, as few as 10% of customers changed plans from year to year. “We wanted to create maximum choice while we had maximum consumer protection,” he said.

Nearly 2 million people were automatically re-enrolled in their 2014 plans after taking no action for 2015. And just over 1 million came back to the site to review their options but made no changes, according to new figures from CMS, the federal agency overseeing implementation of the federal health law. In all, 4.17 million of this year’s sign-ups under the health law are people who had coverage through HealthCare.gov in 2014.

The Obama administration decided last summer to automatically renew coverage for people who didn’t come back to the site. They made that decision to minimize the risk that people would drop out, even though supporters of the health law worried it could financially harm people who didn’t review their insurance choices.

The decision benefited insurers who offered low prices in the first year of the law’s exchanges and scooped up large numbers of customers, since many of those people did remain loyal.

Many people using HealthCare.gov to buy insurance had good reason to shop around for 2015. Carriers that scooped up the largest number of customers in the first year typically increased their rates for the second year by around 10%, The Wall Street Journal found. At the same time, many insurers that were new to the exchanges for 2015, or had fared poorly the first year, offered aggressively low rates in an effort to undercut the market leaders.

That influx of lower-priced plans had an additional, unexpected twist: It pulled down the value of tax credits that many customers received to offset the cost of premiums. The credits are pegged to the price of the second-lowest-cost midrange plan in a given geographic area, as well as an enrollee’s income.

As a result, some people who kept their old coverage found their premium for 2015 rise at the same time the value of their tax credit went down.

[...]

Quote:

 

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2015/02/25/hhs-burwell-obamacare-enrollment/23997923/

...Despite concerns to the contrary, more people shopped around for a new plan than allowed themselves to be automatically re-enrolled, HHS data show. More than 2.2 million chose a new plan and just under 2 million were automatically re-enrolled.

kbp

Feb 25 2015, 09:42 AM

"...without tax subsidies, healthy individuals would be far less likely to purchase health insurance, leaving a disproportionate number of sick individuals in the individual insurance market, which would raise the costs for everyone else.”
Sylvia Mathews Burwell, Secretary of HHS

kbp

Feb 26 2015, 07:40 AM

Quote:

 

http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Justice/2015/0225/Divided-Supreme-Court-lets-fisherman-off-hook-for-tossing-undersized-grouper

Divided Supreme Court lets fisherman off hook for tossing undersized grouper
In a 5-to-4 decision, the Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, passed in the wake of the Enron scandal and intended to prevent the destruction of documents and financial data, could not be applied to fish.

The US Supreme Court on Wednesday ruled that a federal statute passed to prevent the destruction of documents and financial data cannot also be applied broadly to undersized fish caught by a commercial fisherman.

The court voted 5 to 4 in a case requiring the justices to interpret what Congress meant in a law prohibiting the destruction or concealment of “any… tangible object” with intent to obstruct a federal investigation.

The majority justices agreed with the arguments of John Yates, a commercial fisherman in Florida, who faced up to 20 years in prison under the Sarbanes-Oxley Act for obstructing justice by throwing undersized red grouper back into the sea to prevent federal agents from prosecuting him for violating fish size limits.

In contrast to the obstruction charge, the underlying offense of catching undersized fish carries a few years in prison, at most.

In a plurality decision written by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and joined by Justice Samuel Alito, the court said prosecutors could not use the term “tangible object” in the statute as a catchall to prosecute destruction of any and all types of physical evidence. Instead, the phrase was intended to satisfy a narrower goal – punishing efforts to destroy documents and stored data, the court ruled.

“Tangible object [in the statute], we conclude, is better read to cover only objects one can use to record or preserve information, not all objects in the physical world,” Justice Ginsburg wrote.

In a dissent, Justice Elena Kagan said the court should apply the statute the way Congress wrote it, featuring a broad reading of “tangible object.”

“The plurality searches far and wide for anything – anything – to support its interpretation of [the statute],” Justice Kagan wrote. “But its fishing expedition comes up empty.”

The decision stems from a 2007 encounter in the Gulf of Mexico between Yates and a fisheries officer. The officer boarded the fishing vessel, the Miss Katie, and upon inspection identified 72 undersized red grouper.

The officer issued a citation for harvesting undersized fish and instructed Yates to place the fish in a box and present it to authorities when he returned to port.

After the officer left, Yates instructed his crew to fling the small fish overboard and replace them in the box with larger grouper.

When the Miss Katie returned to port, officials discovered the discrepancy. Federal agents obtained a confession from one of the crew members.

Yates was charged with obstructing a federal investigation by destroying evidence. That federal crime carries a punishment of up to 20 years in prison.

A jury convicted him. Yates filed an appeal.

In charging Yates, federal prosecutors relied on a portion of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, a measure passed in the wake of the Enron scandal. The obstruction section prohibits destruction of “any record, document, or tangible object with the intent to impede or obstruct” any matter within the jurisdiction of the federal government.

The specific question in the case was whether “tangible object” can mean “fish.”

[...]

I've seen a few Obamacare supporters cheering this on as evidence SCOTUS (SC) will be inclined to read the entire law and consider the intent of it.

In this case SC read less into the law, or one might say read what limits the law was enacted for. In the King case, it seems they'd have two steps just to get started on finding ambiguity: 1) Read more in to the provisions cited by the defendant as creating an ambiguous understandings, and 2) UNread the plain text.

The cheerleaders out there do not have the obvious INTENT in the Obamacare law that the SC got from the Sarbanes-Oxley Act.
.

LTC8K6

Feb 26 2015, 12:37 PM

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/treasury-wont-explain-decision-to-make-3-billion-in-obamacare-payments/article/2560739

Treasury won't explain decision to make $3 billion in Obamacare payments