AAPS Executive Director Jane M. Orient, M.D. released the following statement following today’s U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit ruling:
King John, before he was forced to sign the Magna Carta, said “the law is in my mouth.”
The IRS said essentially the same thing when ruling that people could get ObamaCare subsidies through federally run Exchanges even though the Affordable Care Act clearly said it had to be through State Exchanges.
The D.C. Circuit Court disagreed in the Halbig case: the law is in the written language of the law, not in what an agency thinks it should say.
Was it a “sloppy drafting error”? Or a failed attempt to coerce states to establish Exchanges? If Congress wants to apply the subsidies to federal Exchanges, it should pass a law that says so.
