One Sentence Sums Up ObamaCare Decision
Law is supposed to improve insurance markets, 'not to destroy them'
By Newser Editors, Newser Staff
newser.com
Posted Jun 25, 2015 5:03 PM CDT
(Newser) – Go ahead, dig into John Roberts' full ObamaCare opinion here. But Dylan Matthews at Vox thinks you need to read only one sentence from the chief justice, near the end. "Congress passed the Affordable Care Act to improve health insurance markets, not to destroy them." It's that simple, writes Matthews: The point of ObamaCare "is to make health insurance markets work better and cover more people. To change the law so as to make them work worse, Roberts concluded, is to betray its clear intent." Some other insights after today's big ruling:
- State exchanges done? Now that the court has upheld the notion that consumers on the federal exchange are entitled to subsidies, expect more states to opt out of running their own exchanges and let the feds handle it, writes Margot Sanger-Katz at the New York Times. States have discovered that it's more complicated and expensive than they thought.
- You had one job, law writers: On SCOTUSblog, Lyle Denniston writes that "the one negative note in the Roberts opinion, and he repeated it in several different ways in announcing the decision orally, was a complaint that Congress had done a rather sloppy job of composing the ACA, making it very difficult for the courts to make sense of all of it."
- Oh, save it: At Hot Air, conservative blogger Allahpundit, no fan of ObamaCare, is feeling fatalistic and rolls his eyes at the typical GOP reaction, like this from Jeb Bush. "Honestly, at this point, I’d prefer that our candidates simply admit defeat than feed me more lies about how we’re going to repeal and replace ObamaCare once the GOP is back in the White House."
- Hillary's all set: Chris Cillizza at the Washington Post observes that Hillary Clinton now has a pat answer when ObamaCare comes up. She can "make the very strong case that the law has been fought judicially, legislatively, and through campaigns and, in each instance, has survived those challenges. 'This is old news,' you can hear Clinton saying. 'The Affordable Care Act is the the law of the land. I know some Republicans might not like that, but the fight is over.'"
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