The Supreme Court upheld the nationwide availability of tax subsidies crucial to the White House’s health care program, handing a major victory to President Obama. Six judges affirmed the verdict of a lower court in King v. Burwell, with three dissenting.
Conservative plaintiffs challenged the 2010 Affordable Care Act, commonly known as Obamacare, arguing that federal tax subsidies envisioned by the law, as written, only applied to health exchanges “established by the state.”
Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Anthony Kennedy, both regarded as conservative, joined the court’s liberal judges Kennedy, Ginsburg, Breyer and, Sotomayor in backing the government’s position. Although the challengers' arguments about the plain meaning of the statute were “strong,” Roberts wrote in the majority opinion, the “context and structure of the act compel us to depart from what would otherwise be the most natural reading of the pertinent statutory phrase."
Only thirteen states have set up their own health care exchanges since 2010. Three other states have hybrid exchanges with the federal government, leaving with 6.4 million Americans in 34 states dependent on federal-run exchanges. They allow low and middle income people to buy private health insurances. The King v. Burwell challenge sought to declare those subsidies illegal, since the exchanges were not “established by the state”.
INC News, 25/06/2015 - via RT
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