Obama on SCOTUS Weighing ObamaCare Challenge: ‘Should Be an Easy Case’

PARSONS: “More than six million Americans may soon lose health insurance if the Supreme Court this month backs the latest challenge to the Affordable Care Act. A growing number of states are looking for assistance as they face the prospect that their residents may lose federal insurance subsidies and their insurance markets may collapse. Yet, your administration has given very little to no guidance on how states can prepare. What can you tell state leaders and advocates who worry that health care markets in half the country may be thrown into chaos?”
OBAMA: “What I can tell state leaders is, is that under well-established precedent, there is no reason why the existing exchanges should be overturned through a court case. It has been well documented that those who passed this legislation never intended for folks who were going through the federal exchange not to have their citizens get subsidies. That’s not just the opinion of me; that’s not just the opinion of Democrats; that’s the opinion of the Republicans who worked on the legislation. The record makes it clear. And under well-established statutory interpretation, approaches that have been repeatedly employed -- not just by liberal, Democratic judges, but by conservative judges like some on the current Supreme Court -- you interpret a statute based on what the intent and meaning and the overall structure of the statute provides for. And so this should be an easy case.  Frankly, it probably shouldn’t even have been taken up. And since we’re going to get a ruling pretty quick, I think it’s important for us to go ahead and assume that the Supreme Court is going to do what most legal scholars who’ve looked at this would expect them to do. But, look, I’ve said before and I will repeat again: If, in fact, you have a contorted reading of the statute that says federal-run exchanges don’t provide subsidies for folks who are participating in those exchanges, then that throws off how that exchange operates. It means that millions of people who are obtaining insurance currently with subsidies suddenly aren’t getting those subsidies; many of them can’t afford it; they pull out; and the assumptions that the insurance companies made when they priced their insurance suddenly gets thrown out the window. And it would be disruptive -- not just, by the way, for folks in the exchanges, but for those insurance markets in those states, generally. So it’s a bad idea. It’s not something that should be done based on a twisted interpretation of four words in -- as we were reminded repeatedly -- a couple-thousand-page piece of legislation.”