Saunders: Supreme Court's white lie on Obamacare - Chron.com
" It was the court's obligation, he wrote, to translate bill language limiting the government subsidies to enrollees in "an exchange established by the state" to also cover federal exchanges. Thirty-four states rely on federal Obamacare exchanges. That's 6 million people, 87 percent of whom bought health care with federal tax credits. Roberts cited a study that predicted that cutting off those subsidies would result in a 47 percent increase in premiums and 70 percent decline in enrollment. Between a rock and a hard place, Roberts argued that Congress surely never meant to cut out subsidies in states without their own exchanges because "it would destabilize the individual insurance market in any state with a Federal Exchange, and... Jonathan Gruber , an MIT economist who advised the White House, explained during a 2012 speech, the federal law limited subsidies to enrollees of state exchanges in order to "squeeze" states to act. Quoth Gruber, "If you're a state and you don't set up an exchange, that means your citizens don't get their tax credits, but your citizens still pay the taxes that support this bill. Source: www.chron.com
