| Healthcare Bill Part III; Obamacare | |
|---|---|
| Tweet Topic Started: Mar 3 2014, 02:20 PM (48,692 Views) | |
| kbp | Mar 25 2014, 12:06 PM Post #196 |
|
Remember that the subsidy eligible does not mean they were uninsured. |
 |
 
|
| kbp | Mar 25 2014, 12:19 PM Post #197 |
|
This case is limited to specific exemption, though cutting off more entities from government control is a good thing. I suppose a big number of business owners could argue for this type of exemption. ADD: The not-for-profits are exempt, so their is a problem separating the for profit copr's Edited by kbp, Mar 25 2014, 12:37 PM.
|
|
|
|
| kbp | Mar 25 2014, 01:05 PM Post #198 |
|
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303775504579395231042008894?mg=reno64-wsj&url=http%3A%2F%2Fonline.wsj.com%2Farticle%2FSB10001424052702303775504579395231042008894.html ObamaCare's Latest Legal Challenge Can the White House simply declare that the federal government is the 51st state? A defining feature of President Obama's second term is his willfulness in defying limits on executive power to suit his political goals, and no more so than with the Affordable Care Act. The judiciary is the last check on those abuses, and this week it will have another opportunity to vindicate the rule of law. On Tuesday the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals will hear one of the more important legal challenges to ObamaCare's lawless implementation. Unlike the challenge to the individual insurance mandate, Halbig v. Sebelius involves no great questions of constitutional interpretation. The plaintiffs are merely asking the judges to tell the Administration to faithfully execute the plain language of the statute that Congress passed and President Obama signed. *** The Affordable Care Act—at least the version that passed in 2010—instructed the states to establish insurance exchanges, and if they didn't the Health and Human Services Department was authorized to build federal exchanges. The law says that subsidies will be available only to people who enroll "through an Exchange established by the State." The question in Halbig is whether these taxpayer subsidies can be distributed through the federal exchanges, as the Administration insists. Prior to passage, Democrats were divided over the structure of the exchanges, with liberals favoring a national clearinghouse and moderates state control. The federalists won and conditioned the subsidies on state-based exchanges. This was no accident. The federal government cannot commandeer the sovereign states under the Constitution, so Democrats created an incentive for Governors to participate voluntarily. If they didn't cooperate by taking the quid of the exchanges, they would deny their constituents the quo of eligibility to claim billions of dollars worth of benefits. The other Democratic goal was to have the states share in the workload of implementation, instead of concentrating everything within HHS. But also prior to passage, Democrats were convinced that the ObamaCare opposition would melt away as Americans learned to love the law. That did not happen. Some 34 states opted out, and two others couldn't meet all the HHS mandates by deadline. So the Administration faced a choice: HHS could either obey the law, deny subsidies to the two-thirds of the U.S. population living in states with federal exchanges and thus greatly diminish Mr. Obama's legacy project. Or it could improvise a workaround—which is what it did. *** In 2012, HHS and the Internal Revenue Service arrogated to themselves the power to rewrite the law and published a regulation simply decreeing that subsidies would be available through the federal exchanges too. The IRS devoted only a single paragraph to its deviation from the statute, even though the "established by a State" language appears nine times in the law's text. The rule claims that an exchange established on behalf of a state is a "federally established state-established exchange," as if HHS is the 51st state. Careful spadework into ObamaCare's legislative history by Case Western Reserve law professor Jonathan Adler and Michael Cannon of the Cato Institute has demonstrated that this jackalope rule-making was contrary to Congress's intent. For example, the bill appropriated a mere $304 million for HHS to run exchanges. The actual cost turned out to be $3.3 billion as state after state dropped out. But legislative intent is irrelevant in matters of statutory interpretation. All that matters is the plain meaning of the words of the law. In administrative law, agencies are granted wide deference to interpret and resolve ambiguous statutes under the Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Council standard, but here the text is clear, consistent and tightly worded: Subsidies in state-based exchanges only. There is also the so-called Yazoo standard, from a 1899 case, that holds that tax benefits "must be expressed in clear and unambiguous terms" and "unquestionably and conclusively" established. This is meant to protect taxpayer rights and the integrity of the Treasury, which the IRS and HHS are eviscerating. If the Administration can rewrite the law, why not extend subsidies to, say, people whose incomes are currently too high to qualify? As it happens, though ObamaCare says subsidies will only be available to people who enroll through an exchange, HHS has already unilaterally extended subsidies to people who enroll outside of an exchange to compensate for its botched rollout. The Administration's dozens of ObamaCare rewrites and delays have gone mostly unchallenged because they tend to insulate people from harm and thus no one has standing to sue. But the availability of subsidies triggers liability for other ObamaCare penalties, such as the individual and employer mandates. Thus in this case the HHS-IRS rule injures people who would otherwise be exempt. Federal judge Paul Friedman, a Clinton appointee, ruled in favor of the Administration in January. But the three-judge D.C. Circuit panel may be another story. It includes Judges Thomas Griffith (a George W. Bush nominee), A. Raymond Randolph ( George H.W. Bush ) and Harry Edwards ( Jimmy Carter ). The fear of an adverse panel ruling is one reason that Senate Democrats broke the filibuster rule to pack the D.C. Circuit with three more liberals this year. If the Administration loses at the panel level, it will ask for an en banc ruling that it thinks it will win and thus delay any Supreme Court judgment by many months. Fear of legal defeat also explains why the Administration is suddenly claiming that the appeals court lacks the jurisdiction to invalidate its interpretation of ObamaCare. Last week the Justice Department submitted a so-called 28(J) letter, declaring that because Halbig is not a class action, any adverse ruling only applies to the named plaintiffs. In other words, even if the court finds that the Administration is acting illegally, it cannot strike down the IRS-HHS rule and the executive branch will continue to ignore both Congress's law and the law of the courts. There are few if any precedents for such a remarkable argument. *** After Chief Justice John Roberts upheld ObamaCare, the refrain on the political left was "it's the law," but the last year has proven that the White House thinks the law is whatever it says it is. Mr. Obama has conceded that "obviously we didn't do a good enough job in terms of how we crafted the law." The right and only lawful way to repair ObamaCare is through another act of Congress. In Halbig, the judiciary can remind the Obama Administration of this basic constitutional truth. |
|
|
|
| kbp | Mar 25 2014, 01:16 PM Post #199 |
|
http://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelcannon/2014/03/24/the-irss-case-in-halbig-v-sebelius-is-crumbling-with-a-little-help-from-its-friends/ The IRS's Case In Halbig v. Sebelius Is Crumbling, With A Little Help From Its Friends Tomorrow morning, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit will hear oral arguments in Halbig v. Sebelius, a case that challenges the IRS’s ability to implement ObamaCare’s health insurance subsidies and mandate penalties in the 34 states with federally established health “exchanges.” Though the IRS prevailed at the district-court level, its allies have been inadvertently undermining the agency’s case ever since. First, a little background. The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 clearly, repeatedly, and consistently says that the above-mentioned subsidies and penalties are authorized only “through an Exchange established by the State.” The IRS breezed right past that explicit, recurring, and uncontradicted indicator of congressional intent, however, when the agency announced it would implement those subsidies and penalties in states that did not establish an Exchange and the federal government established one by default. The IRS is thus taxing the Halbig plaintiffs, who reside in states that did not establish Exchanges, without congressional authorization. The plaintiffs don’t like that. The IRS won at the district-court level thanks to an opinion in which Judge Paul Friedman concluded that Exchanges established by the federal government are “established by the State.” That’s not quite as absurd as it may seem at first. Congress could have deemed federally established Exchanges to be “established by the State” in which they operate, if that had been Congress’ intent. Indeed, that’s what Congress did with respect to Exchanges established by U.S. territories. But Congress did not do so for federal Exchanges. Thus we are firm ground describing Friedman’s ruling as absurd. Congress intentionally offered subsidies only in states that established Exchanges for the same reason it makes numerous categories of federal spending and tax benefits conditional on state action: to induce states to carry out federal priorities. Ever since the IRS’s victory, however, its friends have been inadvertently undermining the agency’s case. For one, the Obama administration says it is implausible that Congress meant “established the State” literally. It “makes no sense,” the government asserts, to think that Congress even contemplated allowing federal Exchanges to operate without subsidies. Yale law professor Abbe Gluck writes, “it would be nonsensical to deprive citizens in federal-exchange states of the subsidies.” Except…several of the government’s friends — including professor Gluck — have now conceded it does make sense, because Congress was actively considering that very idea. Separate amicus briefs by the AARP and the seven congressional Democratic leaders most responsible for the PPACA, as well as a recent blog post by Gluck all acknowledge that allowing federal Exchanges to operate without subsidies was a live issue during the debate that produced the PPACA. (Fun facts: two of those seven congressional Democrats sponsored the idea. And all seven ultimately voted for it in the PPACA, though they now disavow all knowledge. They were for it, before they were against it. Another group of key congressional Democrats complained back in 2010 that the PPACA’s Exchange subsidies, like the State Children’s Health Insurance Program, were conditional and that states could block them. They then voted for the PPACA, yet now claim they never intended subsidies to be conditional. They were against it, before they were for it, before they were against it.) Gluck further concedes that Congress contemplated withholding those subsidies specifically if states failed to establish Exchanges when she acknowledges the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee’s health care bill would have withheld subsidies from such states for four years. The government has also argued that Congress deemed federally established Exchanges to be “established by the State,” despite the statute containing no explicit or implicit language to that effect. Gluck undermines this claim as well. In her discussion of the HELP Bill, she concedes that Congress knew how to deem a state to be an “establishing state” even if the state did not establish an Exchange — something the PPACA did not do. We already know, from the PPACA provisions concerning U.S. territories, that Congress knew how to treat non-states as though they were states. Gluck’s reaffirmation is appreciated nonetheless. Unfortunately, she goes on to assert that courts should interpret the PPACA as if it contains such deeming language for federal Exchanges, simply because a prior bill does. The more the IRS’s defenders write about this case, the more they will undermine the agency’s position in court, because its position is untenable. |
|
|
|
| kbp | Mar 25 2014, 01:26 PM Post #200 |
|
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2014/03/24/what-the-district-court-got-wrong-and-right-in-halbig-v-sebelius/ The Volokh Conspiracy What the district court got wrong (and right) in Halbig v. Sebelius This is somewhat long, but I consider well worth reading. He covers most details involved for interpreting what the Sections under the statute say and mean. |
|
|
|
| Baldo | Mar 25 2014, 01:29 PM Post #201 |
|
"....Jim Jost, a well-known health lawyer who backs the law, said the vagueness of some exemptions troubles him. “Can I say, ‘I don’t like the options available,’ or ‘I’d rather spend my money on whatever,’” he said. “I just don’t understand where they are going with these very wide-open hardship exemptions, and I think they are opening the door to some real mischief.” Insurers, which priced their policies based on the expectation that the mandate will drive otherwise reluctant (and relatively healthy) people into their plans, are watching closely for any further erosion. Premiums could soar without healthy customers to balance the cost of covering sicker people with pre-existing conditions, now required by law...." snipped http://www.politico.com/story/2014/03/shrinking-obamacare-mandate-104966.html#.UzEOxTOnnLE.twitter So if you are a honest working citizen who pays your bills & your taxes you are sh*t out of luck. Welcome to Obama's Bohicaland! Where Unions & Deadbeats get Breaks & You get the Shaft! Edited by Baldo, Mar 25 2014, 01:32 PM.
|
|
|
|
| kbp | Mar 25 2014, 03:25 PM Post #202 |
|
http://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/hobby-lobby-isnt-todays-most-important-case?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter Hobby Lobby Isn’t Today’s Most Important Case Tuesday, all eyes will be on a high-profile Obamacare case before the Supreme Court. But just a few blocks away, a lower court will hear a lesser-known Obamacare case that could have a far greater impact on the future of the law. The Supreme Court hears oral arguments Tuesday in Sebelius v. Hobby Lobby, a case challenging the Obama administration’s attempt to force private companies to purchase contraceptives for their employees contrary to the owners’ religious beliefs. A ruling for Hobby Lobby would restore the religious freedom of potentially millions of employers and workers. “Obamacare supporters call Halbig “the greatest existential litigation threat to the Affordable Care Act.”” Just down the street, the Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit will hear oral arguments in Halbig v. Sebelius. Obamacare supporters call Halbig ”the greatest existential litigation threat to the Affordable Care Act.” That description, while colorful, is not quite accurate. Halbig does not ask the courts to strike down any part of the law. It merely asks the court to force the administration to implement the law as Congress intended, a prospect that absolutely terrifies Obamacare supporters. The issues in Halbig are simple. Obamacare authorizes the IRS to provide health-insurance subsidies (nominally, tax credits) to consumers who purchase health insurance “through an Exchange established by the State.” That’s not a drafting error. The subsidy-eligibility rules employ that language a total of nine times, without deviation. The rest of the statue is fully compatible with this language. The statute is therefore clear and unambiguous: the IRS may issue subsidies in the14 states that established an exchange, but not in the 34 states that left the job of establishing and operating their state’s exchange to the federal government. Congress’ purpose is likewise clear. It wanted states to operate the exchanges, so it conditioned subsidies on state cooperation. Medicaid and countless other federal programs do the same. The IRS’s philosopher-kings have decided to issue subsidies in those 34 states anyway. The Obama administration has acquired a reputation for unilaterally rewriting laws (to say nothing of abusing the IRS’s powers) for political purposes, but this one takes the cake. The IRS is literally spending billions of taxpayer dollars not only without congressional authorization — itself a federal crime – but contrary to the clearly expressed will of Congress. And it gets worse. Since that spending triggers penalties under Obamacare’s employer and individual mandates, the IRS also plans to tax millions of Americans without congressional authorization. Dozens of employers and individuals who would be subject to those illegal taxes have filed four separate lawsuits to stop the illegal spending that triggers them. Halbig is the first to reach the appellate level. When a statutory provision is clear and the rest of the statute is consistent with that provision, that’s supposed to be the end of the story. The Supreme Court has long held, “[If] Congress has spoken directly to the precise question at issue…that is the end of the matter; for the court, as well as the agency, must give effect to the unambiguously expressed intent of Congress.” Yet the Obama administration fears that if consumers in 34 states experience the full cost of Obamacare, Congress will have no choice but to reopen the law. It has therefore offered numerous arguments in defense of its unauthorized spending and taxes — not because any of these arguments have merit, but because none of them do. Nevertheless, a district court ruled against the Halbig plaintiffs based on a severely distorted view of Congress’ intent. The court wrote, “there is no evidence that either the House or the Senate considered making tax credits dependent upon whether a state participated in the Exchanges.” On the contrary, the evidence is clear. The words of the statute themselves show that both chambers not only considered but approved that idea. The senators who enacted Obamacare routinely supported and enacted legislation conditioning health-insurance tax credits and other assistance on states establishing exchanges or taking other actions. The seven members of Congress most responsible for Obamacare — former Senate Finance Committee chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.), Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee chairman Tom Harkin (D-Ia.), then-House Ways & Means Committee chairman Sander Levin (D-Mich.), then-House Education & Workforce Committee chairman George Miller (D-Calif.), then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), and then-House Energy and Commerce Committee chairman Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) — even admit in an amicus brief that conditioning subsidies on states establishing exchanges was part of the congressional debate. Finally, when House Democrats first read the Senate-passed bill — what we now call Obamacare — in 2010, they recognized that it conditions subsidies on states establishing exchanges, and complained that this feature would allow recalcitrant states to block those subsidies. In this instance at least, Congress knew what it was enacting. The purpose of these conditional subsidies was to create an incentive for states to establish exchanges. The judiciary has an obligation to make them conditional again, so that process can work. Whether the result is that Congress will reopen Obamacare or 34 more states will establish exchanges remains to be seen. ADD: USA Today link to same article: http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2014/03/25/obamacare-irs-halbig-sebelius-health-care-insurance-column/6830651/ Edited by kbp, Mar 25 2014, 03:28 PM.
|
|
|
|
| kbp | Mar 25 2014, 03:35 PM Post #203 |
|
http://theincidentaleconomist.com/wordpress/does-the-sequester-apply-to-cost-sharing-subsidies/ Does the sequester apply to cost-sharing subsidies? March 14, 2014 at 8:00 am Nicholas Bagley Remember the sequester? That budgetary meat cleaver that indiscriminately slashes the federal budget, sparing few federal programs? Well, the sequester also affects parts of the ACA—including its cost-sharing subsidies. These subsidies are available to people with incomes below 250% of the poverty line who buy a silver plan on an exchange. For anyone up to 400% of the poverty line, the subsidies will also cap total out-of-pocket costs at a reduced level. Until recently, the Office of Management and Budget’s considered view was that cost-sharing subsidies were subject to the sequester and would have to be cut by 7.2% in 2014. As Loren Adler of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget first noticed, however, OMB released a report on Monday indicating that cost-sharing subsidies will now be exempt from the sequester. What explains the administration’s about-face? The policy justification is obvious. Trimming the subsidies would have cost roughly $286 million in 2014 alone. Exchange plans would probably have had to eat those costs. As the Congressional Research Service has explained:
Does OMB have the legal authority to exempt cost-sharing subsidies from sequestration? Loren reported that the agency “may be basing the exemption on the fact that the low-income cost-sharing subsidies for Medicare Part D are explicitly exempted from sequestration.” But that’s an odd justification. The fact that Congress spared Part D subsidies doesn’t imply that it also spared ACA subsidies. If anything, the Part D exemption suggests the opposite: Congress knows how to exempt health-insurance subsidies from sequestration and declined to do so for the ACA. Maybe OMB’s argument is more sophisticated, though. The Budget Control Act of 2011, which put the sequester in place, instructs OMB to use the rules of the Statutory Pay-As-You-Go Act to implement the sequester. The Statutory Pay-As-You-Go Act includes the language exempting Part D subsidies from the sequester. The Act, however, was passed in February 2010, a month before the ACA was enacted. Arguably, Congress would also have exempted similar cost-sharing subsidies in the ACA—except it couldn’t because those subsidies didn’t yet exist. On this view, OMB’s volte-face is an effort to honor Congress’s apparent intent to shield cost-sharing subsidies of all sorts from sequestration. That’s not a strong argument, however. Congress could have exempted the ACA’s cost-sharing subsidies when it created the sequester in 2011, much as it crafted special rules to cap the sequester for Medicare. But it didn’t. What’s more, an argument based on congressional intent could just as easily cut the other way. The point of the sequester was to inflict enough pain on both political parties to get them to agree on a budget. Cutting the cost-sharing subsidies would undeniably serve that pain-inflicting purpose. Now, it’s possible that OMB has a different legal justification in mind. I hope so, especially because there’s an outside risk that exempting the subsidies could lead to litigation. In an email exchange, Loren asked me a terrific question: “By exempting the cost-sharing subsidies, that increases the percentage reduction to all other sequesterable mandatory spending programs (and slightly lowers the non-defense discretionary spending cap). Would a farmer who now faces a bigger cut or a state now facing a bigger grant cut have standing?” I think they might. The courts don’t generally interfere in budget disputes because no individual can claim a concrete, particularized injury. But if a plaintiff can make a convincing showing that she would have received more federal money but for the sequester, she would probably have standing to sue. Sure, linking the sequester to a particular reduction could be hard: after all, government funding often varies from year to year for reasons having nothing to do with the sequester. And not every plaintiff that could make such a showing would welcome litigation. Nonetheless, there’s a non-trivial risk that the OMB decision could end up in court. If it does, I’ll be curious to see the administration’s legal justification. The one on offer so far looks shaky. |
|
|
|
| Mason | Mar 25 2014, 03:50 PM Post #204 |
Parts unknown
|
. Finally, a Talking Head on Fox said this lastest round of spending on Obamacare shows the fallacy of it failing under its own weight, rather, she said, it's become a black hole for Taxpayers dollars. A black hole for Taxpayer dollars. The pretend conservatives on Fox never gave one example of a large Gov't Program that died on its own - yet, look how many Talking Heads picked up that line and propagated it. . |
|
|
| kbp | Mar 25 2014, 03:53 PM Post #205 |
|
Some young lady on Fox just told viewers that Obamacare has cost state and fed $684 million in advertising. Probably same one Mason saw. Edited by kbp, Mar 25 2014, 03:53 PM.
|
|
|
|
| Mason | Mar 25 2014, 04:08 PM Post #206 |
|
Parts unknown
|
. YES. She was thinking on her own. I suspect they know that nothing fails on its own in D.C. - it just's folded into the black hole of debt. . |
|
|
|
| chatham | Mar 25 2014, 08:48 PM Post #207 |
|
This entire administrtion needs to be booted and put in jail. http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/obama-administration-will-allow-more-time-to-enroll-in-health-care-on-federal-marketplace/2014/03/25/d0458338-b449-11e3-8cb6-284052554d74_story.html |
|
|
|
| Baldo | Mar 25 2014, 09:30 PM Post #208 |
|
....Under the new rules, people will be able to qualify for an extension by checking a blue box on HealthCare.gov to indicate that they tried to enroll before the deadline. This method will rely on an honor system; the government will not try to determine whether the person is telling the truth. The rules, which will apply to the federal exchanges operating in three dozen states, will essentially create a large loophole even as White House officials have repeatedly said that the March 31 deadline was firm. The extra time will not technically alter the deadline but will create a broad new category of people eligible for what’s known as a special enrollment period. The change, which the administration is scheduled to announce Wednesday, is supported by consumer advocates who want as many people as possible to gain insurance under the 2010 Affordable Care Act. But it’s likely to be criticized by Republicans who oppose the law and have denounced the way the administration is implementing it..... Reminds me of what is the definition of "is" The real numbers must be bad! |
|
|
|
| Mason | Mar 25 2014, 09:44 PM Post #209 |
|
Parts unknown
|
. I said it was going to be "the Honor System." They don't want accuracy, they don't want data integrity, they could care less about fraud. I suspect the ACORN actors are manipulating numbers as we speak. . |
|
|
|
| Baldo | Mar 25 2014, 09:46 PM Post #210 |
|
On 3/12, Sebelius was asked, "Are you going to delay the open enrollment beyond March 31?" Her answer: "No, sir" |
|
|
|
| 1 user reading this topic (1 Guest and 0 Anonymous) | |
| Go to Next Page | |
| « Previous Topic · LIESTOPPERS UNDERGROUND · Next Topic » |
11:55 AM Jul 13