Some states are publicly clarifying that they consider their health insurance marketplace created under Obamacare to be state-based, according to the Wall Street Journal.
That would prevent their residents from losing their tax credits under the law if the Supreme Court were to decide that tax credits were not available through the federal marketplace, HealthCare.gov. Two federal appeals court ruled differently on the issue last week — one upheld the subsidies; the other struck them down — and the issue could be heading to the high court.
Two officially state-based marketplaces, Idaho and New Mexico, used HealthCare.gov’s technical platform this year. But in their decision, the federal appeals court judges who struck down subsidies through the federal website lumped them in with the other 34 states using the federal marketplace. Idaho quickly proclaimed itself to be state-based after the ruling, the Journal reported.
“Your Health Idaho has always been a state-based exchange,” an Idaho spokeswoman told the newspaper. “During the first year, Your Health Idaho borrowed [the] federal application platform because there was not enough time to properly build the required technology.”
Two other state-based marketplaces, Nevada and Oregon, had already announced that they will switch to HealthCare.gov in 2015 after a disastrous experience with their own software this year. They have said publicly since the court ruling that they will still be state-based, according to the Journal.
A few other states, including Arkansas and Delaware, are labeled as “partnership” marketplaces, sharing responsibilities for administering the exchange with the federal government, and they use HealthCare.gov. Some of those states have also said in the week since the court decision that they should be considered “state-based.”
“We are administering a marketplace,” Rita Landgraf, Delaware’s secretary of health and social services, told the Journal. “We happen to use the IT that the federal government has set up, because we got a better economy of scale.”
Where are the Democratic leaders on this issue? Hundreds of thousands of US Citizens stand to be priced out of healthcare insurance. Pres Obama was crucified over insurance cancellations…where none of those people actually lost coverage, but simply had to change insurance carriers.
Now, thousands will LOSE coverage. All thanks to the RW and their cronies. Obviously, the two states mentioned want no part of this GOP “win”. They’re preemptively running for cover.
For all we’ve heard about Obamacare from the RW. Think about this. Millions of previously uninsured are now insured due to Obamacare. We know this factually. I’ve not heard of anyone who can say the opposite. Meaning, no one who was insured, is now uninsured…because of Obamacare. Again…where are the Democrats on this?
They have always been state-based. Each exchange, whether the website is run by Healthcare.gov or a State run website, are state-based exchanges.
how effective do you think that will be as a legal distinction if this gets out of hand? i’d love it if a little ju-jitsu could fix this-
I doubt that it will make it past the en banc stage since I don’t think the SCOTUS will take up any subsequent appeal. That said, even the CBO’s analysis of all the proposed and the passed versions of the ACA, since 2009 onward, have made clear that subsidies were to all 50 state exchanges, whether the websites were Federally run or state run.
Sounds like common sense to me. And if we had a congress with any common sense (talking to YOU, Orange Man) they’d just pass a quick 2 sentence legislative fix and be done with it.
Instead we’ll see more litigation.