The Supreme Court has begun hearing arguments in the most recent case against the Affordable Care Act, King v. Burwell.
The case has been brought before the Supreme Court due to IRS subsidies to more than 30 states that have not enacted state-based health insurance exchanges, in contrast to the language of the Affordable Care Act that prohibits these subsidies.
Fox News reports that the plaintiffs, as well as the Federal government defendants, were able to make convincing arguments and Justice Kennedy may be the deciding vote for the case.
Justice Elena Kagan argued in favor of the government’s defense:
“We are interpreting a statute generally to make it whole, right? We look at the whole text. We don’t look at four words. We look at the whole text, the particular context, the more general context, try to make everything harmonious with everything else.”
However, Justice Antonin Scalia challenged the government’s case:
“Answer me in principle. I mean, is it not the case that if the only reasonable interpretation of a particular provision produces disastrous consequences in the rest of the statute, it nonetheless means what it says.”
The American Center for Law and Justice has filed an amicus brief in this particular case against the government’s defense of the IRS provisions:
“the IRS regulations are part of the Administration’s ongoing effort to rewrite or suspend portions of the ACA (Affordable Care Act), in violation of the separation of powers.”
On their website, ACLJ argues that these moves made have constituted a massive overreach in executive powers:
“This Executive overreach of this President is perhaps the most damaging and dangerous power play yet.”
“This Administration’s make-it-up-as-we-go approach to implementing ObamaCare is not only wrong but unconstitutional.”
“The implementation of these badly flawed IRS regulations produces a couple of very disturbing results: it makes it impossible to accomplish ObamaCare’s goal of encouraging state promotion, and secondly, it promotes the federalization of this nation’s healthcare in direct contravention of Congress’s intent.”
The court is set to make a decision by the end of June that will decide the fate of the President’s signature legislation.
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