The ObamaCare "back door code" that everybody knew was there from the "law's" earliest days has now been activated:
Barack Obama's healthcare overhaul suffered a potentially crippling blow as a U.S. appeals court ruled the government cannot give financial assistance to anyone buying coverage on the insurance marketplace run by federal authorities.
The decision, if it withstands appeals, may deprive more than half the people who signed up for Obamacare the tax credits they need to buy a health plan.
Recall that the way O-Care is written, subsidies can only be made available on health policies purchased via a state exchange, not healthcare.gov. Given that only sixteen states attempted to set up their own cartels, and only fourteen of them were successful, this has always been one of the Unaffordable Care-Less Act's most naked vulnerabilities.
If the actual, original text of the UCLA mattered, of course. Given that False Messiah has already illegally waivered and deferred and tweaked and twerked it over three dozen times from Final Sunday by now, I'm hard pressed to say just how this appellate court ruling matters all that much. All it'll take is a sweep of King Hussein's royal pen to keep the subsidies flowing. At least, assuming anybody in the Regime has figured out yet how much is supposed to go to each member of every group below Bill Gates level. I understand they're still cloudier on that than a Jack Daniels-diarrhea cocktail.
And, sure enough:
The Obama administration immediately declared that those policyholders would keep getting financial aid for their premiums as it seeks review of the ruling. White House spokesman Josh Earnest said the decision would have "no practical impact" on tax credits as the case works its way through further appeals.
How rapidly or languidly they review the ruling depends upon what they perceive to be the likelihood of the SCOTUS ruling in their favor on final appeal. If they believe that the Roberts Court will uphold the IRS rule in question just like they did the Individual Mandate two years ago, then they'll move quickly to appeal, get the appellate court decision overturned, and jackboot "forward". If, especially given the lengthening string of lopsided reversals they've suffered at Olympus of late, they conclude that the Chief Justice may see this as an opportunity to rectify that mistake via the, well, "back door," then they are likely to finally retrieve all of Lois Lerner's "lost" emails before they get finished reviewing the D.C. Circuit decision.
Of course, even without the subsidies, the Regime would keep ObamaCare in place. There's no way The One is ever going to allow his crown jewel of infamy to be gutted or dismantled. But the absence of that outflowing revenue stream would complicate things by forcing the planned move to single-payer sooner than he wanted, and with the House still in GOP hands and the Senate likely to be next year as well, he'd have to implement it via executive decree. Not that he wouldn't, but the process would work a lot smoother if it can be done "under the radar" (i.e. media blackout) rather than beneath the glare of public outrage. The Border Crisis is a good example of the latter.
That's why what's left of my money is on an eternal review of the D.C. circuit's ruling. As lazy as Red Barry is, that alone will enable him to double his number of golf outings since taking power.
UPDATE: It's going to Olympus:
Two federal judicial panels on Tuesday delivered conflicting rulings on how the government subsidizes premiums through President Barack Obama's healthcare law, creating more uncertainty over signature legislation that has been dogged by challenges from Republicans and other conservatives.
The rulings, handed down by appeals court judges in the District of Columbia and Virginia, could lead to a new showdown over ObamaCare before the U.S. Supreme Court, which in June 2012 narrowly upheld the Democratic president's healthcare insurance overhaul....
Hours later, a three-judge panel of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Virginia ruled unanimously to uphold the provision, saying the wording of the law was too ambiguous to restrict the availability of the funds.
Clear words are always too ambiguous once you've concealed them below strategically applied white-out. The Fourth Circuit's D.C. counterparts didn't want to rule the right way, but regrettably for them, they can actually read. Either that or they were out of white-out.
This just makes John Roberts's day, doesn't it? Will he see this as a chance at redemption for his spineless, lawless capitulation on the Individual Mandate, or will recent history repeat itself? And, even more to the point, will he and Justices Scalia, Kennedy, Thomas, and Alito all live to rule on this case? "Accidents" do happen, you know.
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