Afternoon Must-Read: Ian Millhiser: A Non-Lawyer’s Guide To The Latest Supreme Court Case Attacking Obamacare

Ian Millhiser: A Non-Lawyer’s Guide To The Latest Supreme Court Case Attacking Obamacare: “The Supreme Court announced on Friday that it would hear a lawsuit…

…known as King v. Burwell, seeking to undermine the Affordable Care Act by cutting of subsidies intended to help millions of Americans pay for health insurance. Obamacare gives every state government a choice…. The government’s arguments are correct and the plaintiffs’ arguments are misleading…. Congress can define the phrase ‘Exchange established by the State’ to also include exchanges established by the federal government… and that is exactly what Congress did in the Affordable Care Act. Two provisions…. The first provides that ‘[a]n Exchange shall be a governmental agency or nonprofit entity that is established by a State.’

Read in isolation, this passage can be read in one of two ways. One way to read it is as a passage limiting who can set up exchanges. If an Exchange ‘shall be’ an ‘entity that is established by a State,’ that seems to mean that no other kind of ‘Exchange’ can exist. If the passage is read this way, federally run exchanges would be illegal, because they are not an ‘entity that is established by a State.’ The other… is that it is meant to define the term ‘Exchange.’ Under this second possible reading, the word ‘Exchange’ is defined so that any Exchange is deemed to be ‘established by a State,’ even if it was actually established by the federal government….

A third provision… provides that if a state elects not to set up its own exchange, ‘the Secretary shall (directly or through agreement with a not-for-profit entity) establish and operate such Exchange within the State and the Secretary shall take such actions as are necessary to implement such other requirements.’… This may seem as bizarre as using the word ‘dog’ when you really mean ‘cat,’ but Congress has the power to define words in counterintuitive ways, and courts are obligated to follow those definitions…. King v. Burwell, in other words, is a straightforward case of statutory interpretation, and the law is clearly on the government’s side…. The subtitle of the Affordable Care Act which contains the provision plaintiffs rely upon is titled ‘Affordable Coverage Choices for All Americans.’ It is not entitled, ‘Affordable Coverage Choices for Americans Who Live In States That Elect To Set Up Their Own Exchanges’…