Court Of Appeals Throws Out ObamaCare Subsidies On Federal Exchange

Consider this a place holder until Gabe comes along to do a happy dance and break it all down.

D.C. Cir. decides #Halbig; "ACA unambiguously restricts ... subsidy to insurance purchased on [State] Exchanges.�: http://t.co/vXwo0agp54. — Steve Vladeck (@steve_vladeck) July 22, 2014

(Background on the case here)

So basically anyone who gets their ObamaCare on the federal exchange, which is a lot if not most, can't get subsidies. This would be a death blow to ObamaCare.

This will no doubt be appealed either to the full Court of Appeals, which Obama has packed with his appointees or directly to the Supreme Court.

Either way, John Roberts just threw up in his mouth a little bit.

Basically what happened here is the law says subsidies can only be paid to policies written on state exchanges. Obama then rewrote the law to include the federal exchange because...he wanted to.

This became a big deal when the states didn't create exchanges or they imploded due to poor implementation and more people were forced on to the federal exchange than anticipated.

Liberals maintain the omission of subsidies on the federal exchange was simply a drafting error. Opponents maintained it was a deliberate choice in order to provide incentives for states to create their own exchanges. Either way, the appeals court ruled today that law says what it says (subsidies for state exchanges only) and not what Obama's IRS says it says.

Added: Administration will go for the en banc review before the stacked full court.