OBAMACARE USERS BETTER WATCH-OUT FOR RIGHT-WING JUDGES

 

…This is Judge Thomas B. Griffith, one of the conservative judges that tried to make federal Obamacare insurance exchanges illegal.

 

With the shrinking size of the GOP, they continue to gerrymander the congressional districts and stack the courts with their conservative judges.

 

Well, looks like the Republicans long-term plan to load the nation’s benches with conservative judges has been working well for them.  It’s not just in the US Supreme Court where the righties have their 5 to 4 majority, it’s also now showing itself in the different district and appeals courts.

As was stated years ago by a retired Supreme Court Justice, "ideally our judges should be, an impartial guardian of the rule of law.” 

 

Oh, wouldn’t that be wonderful if only it were true today.

Yes, we all know that in the thousands of pages of the Affordable Care Act, (ACA), also known as, “Obamacare”,  that there are some policy statements that could have been made much clearer. 

So, this week two members of a three-judge panel of the DC Circuit Court of Appeals showed just how far-right they have strayed from any possible impartiality.  These two conservative judges have stated that all the states that are using federal insurance exchanges are not following the ACA law. 

Everyone associated with the ACA knows that the law was meant to give as many people as possible affordable health care.  But the laws’ actual wording says that only the states have the “legal exchanges”. 

 

As many of the Republican-run states decided not to set up their own exchanges, the federal government then came in and set them up.  The actual “word of law ’”says that only the “states” would be setting up the exchanges, and it doesn’t even mention anything about the federal government.

The reality is that leaving out “federal” was only a typo.  Those that wrote the law have stated that the overall principle of the law was to provide health care through whatever means possible.  The writers just forgot to say “state or federal exchanges”.  Taking away the current 36 states with “federal exchanges” would take away health care subsidies for lower-income people in all 36 states. 

The ACA has a mandate requiring Americans to buy health insurance and it subsidizes those who need help to pay their premiums. The law totally falls apart without the subsidies, which go to its central purpose “of providing insurance for those who cannot afford it.”  That would mean over 5 million people could immediately not afford their ACA coverage.

This bogus issue is because the conservative judges say, “Sorry, the letter of the law says only “states”, not the federal government.  Therefore, “the feds’ exchanges gotta go.”

The good news is that on the same day this decision came down, another three-judge panel from the 4th Circuit unanimously ruled 180° the other way, upholding the ACA law and all the federal exchanges.  In addition, its highly possible that the 11 judges on that same DC Circuit will take the “no” decision away from their 3 judge panel.  It is virtually certain that a majority of the D.C. court’s members disagree with the panel’s convoluted reading of the law.

When the law was originally written in Congress, they had expected that at first, the states would be setting up the insurance exchanges where individuals could purchase ACA coverage. But they also knew that some Republican run states might not decide to set up their own marketplaces, so it also figured that a federal exchange would be there for those red states that said “no”.  Today there are 36 states with federal exchanges and absolutely no state exchanges.  Based on these two conservative judges, these 36 exchanges would have to close.

The reality is that this is not the last time a law has been ambiguous and has had to be dealt with by a higher court.  In fact, the US Supreme court has ruled that in instances of a laws uncertainty, the court will defer to the federal agencies, rather than trying to deal with the law’s text clarity.

Judge Andre M. Davis wrote in agreement with the 4th Circuit ruling that: “Neither the canons of construction nor any empirical analysis suggests that congressional drafting is a perfectly harmonious, symmetrical and elegant endeavor. . . . Sausage-makers are indeed offended when their craft is linked to legislating.”

But according to these two conservative judges, as stated by the op-ed writer E.J. Dionne, ”….these two Republican-appointed judges on the D.C. panel did [their decision] to make the sausage disappear entirely.”  This was not the intent of those that actually wrote the ACA law.

But these conservatives are basically saying, “We don’t care that the writers are saying it’s a typo or that the original intent was for providing whatever wording would allow people to obtain health care.  That’s just too bad.”

Thankfully, most of the nation’s judges don’t agree with these two conservatives, but this slip-up in wording is really getting those that hate the ACA to now think they have a way to go after the law that was passed 5 years ago.

In the long run, I don’t see even the GOP taking away health care from 8 million new health care subscribers.

But as they say, “anything is possible in politics, especially with conservatives”.  From now on, everybody better just watch their backs.

Copyright G.Ater  2014