On the recordJuly 29, 2014
The recent decision in Halbig v. Burwell held that ObamaCare ``makes tax credits available . . . to individuals who purchase health insurance through . . . exchanges . . . established by the State.'' Supporters of the law predictably decried judicial partisanship. They claimed the reasoning of the Court was spurious because it led to an absurd result which was not in line with the intended policy of the law. Also recently, video surfaced of MIT health economist Jonathan Gruber, a prominent architect of and supporter of ObamaCare, clearly stating that States have an incentive to set up exchanges so that their citizens will have access to Federal subsidies. So much for the charge that the Court's reasoning led to an absurd result. Mr. Speaker, it is quite obvious that someone at some point in the legislative drafting of ObamaCare thought using Federal subsidies as an incentive to get States to set up insurance exchanges was a good idea, and that was the view that was codified as law. But at a fundamental level, the issue here isn't the way the statute was written; it is the way the statute was passed. The extremely partisan nature of ObamaCare's passage has made the administration unwilling or unable to seek fixes via the normal legislative process because doing so would necessitate working across the aisle and compromising. We all remember that ObamaCare was hastily passed after an election which cost the Democrats their supermajority in the Senate.…
