Justice Alito, seen here doing something else besides shamelessly finagling on King v. Burwell

Justice Alito, seen here doing something else besides shamelessly finagling on King v. Burwell

. By now, you're even more tired of my writing about. But every single development in the case that threatens to bring down the Affordable Care Act serves to either demonstrate the amoral hypocrisy of the conservatives who brought the suit, or show just how little other Republicans care about the millions of people who would be affected by an adverse ruling.

For those unfamiliar with the case, here's the simplest of recaps: one particular phrase in the Affordable Care Act refers the subsidies that help lower-income people afford insurance as being available to plans purchased on "exchanges established by the State." The plaintiffs in the case are arguing that since individual states don't actively establish the federally facilitated exchange that operates in states that haven't yet set up their own, subsidies for participants on the federal exchange are unlawful. Millions of people are currently receiving subsidized insurance on the federal exchange. If the Supreme Court rules in favor of the plaintiffs, those subsidies will be illegal, and those millions of people will quite possibly not be able to afford coverage, possibly sending the state's insurance market into a premium death spiral.

The plaintiffs' case has three main problems: First, Congress clearly intended subsidies to be available on the federal exchange, which matters in a case of ambiguous reading. Second, the plaintiffs' own lawyers argued previously that the interpretation they're pushing now would be unconstitutional, and most of the time it's a legal no-no to side with an interpretation that raises constitutional questions. But third is the politics: Even if the case were a true toss-up from a legal perspective, there's still the thorny issue of taking away insurance subsidies from well over 7 million people. A new Republican solution? Yes, take the subsidies away and don't replace them. Just, do it more slowly to lessen the immediacy of the crisis. More on that below the fold.