The Corner

Politics & Policy

SCOTUS Rules 6–3 to Maintain Obamacare Subsidies

The decision, with the opinion authored by Chief Justice John Roberts (Quin has words for him below), is here. Scalia’s pointed rebuke from the dissent (emphasis mine): 

Having transformed two major parts of the law, the Court today has turned its attention to a third. The Act that Congress passed makes tax credits available only on an “Exchange established by the State.” This Court, however, concludes that this limitation would prevent the rest of the Act from working as well as hoped. So it rewrites the law to make tax credits available everywhere. We should start calling this law SCOTUScare. 

That’s the end to months of handwringing over whether Republicans could unite around a plan for the possibility the Supreme Court would rule the law doesn’t authorize many of the subsidies the Obama administration has been paying out. The lack of Republican consensus on the question was disappointing — but the much more important question of what Republicans should be doing about health care, period, is far from over.

Patrick Brennan was a senior communications official at the Department of Health and Human Services during the Trump administration and is former opinion editor of National Review Online.
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