The Supreme Court is about to hear King v. Burwell, a case that threatens to seriously undermine Obamacare. As the plaintiffs of the case have pointed out, the text of the law doesn’t allow the federal government to provide health insurance subsidies to people who purchase insurance through the federal exchange. The authors of the law likely didn’t count on states refusing — and in some cases trying and failing — to set up their own Obamacare exchanges. Despite the plain language of the law, critics continue to dismiss this argument as absurd, even though Obamacare architect Jonathan Gruber has been caught on tape saying this is how the law is supposed to work.
Naturally, the left is panicking about the possibility that the Supreme Court could end up gutting Obamacare. The arguments are starting to take on a whiff of desperation, as evidenced by this article at Mother Jones, “America’s Largest Health Care Company Tells Supreme Court That Anti-Obamacare Argument Is ‘Absurd.‘” Here’s how the piece begins: “If getting rid of Obamacare is such a good idea, why isn’t corporate America getting behind King v. Burwell, the Supreme Court case designed to demolish the Affordable Care Act?”
So a major insurer, which has hundreds of millions of dollars in profit depending on these Obamacare subsidies, opposes getting rid of said subsidies. This is not exactly surprising — what is surprising is that left-wing publications are now openly arguing that support from corporate America validates the law. Later on, the Mother Jones piece even explains that insurers made a Faustian bargain with the government in the hopes that they would profit from the law in the long-term:
HCA says that it has only recently begun to see new revenue come in. (Of the roughly 134,000 patients with federal exchange-based insurance who visited an HCA facility last year, 62 percent had never been there before. This suggests that the new insurance program was definitely driving business to HCA’s hospitals and clinics.) If the Supreme Court kills off the Obamacare subsidies, HCA says it will have to absorb about $350 million in initial losses and far more in the future.
Now there’s a word for applauding the collusion of corporate and government interests in taking over huge sectors of the economy while ignoring market competition and rule of law. In fact, it’s pretty much the textbook definition of fascism:
What’s further astonishing about the Mother Jones piece is the way that it attempts to bait Chief Justice John Roberts into supporting Obamacare:
Roberts is a conservative, but he’s also a former corporate lawyer. During his tenure, he has consistently sided with corporate America and the Chamber of Commerce in all sorts of cases. An ideologically driven case like King might provide good fare for the court’s conservatives—but Roberts may draw the line at ruling in these plaintiffs’ favor when they are threatening the profits of big business. At least, that’s what one of the nation’s biggest health care companies is now hoping for.
So to sum up, so little is thought of Roberts that it’s expected he will be easily persuaded by the argument that corporate profits matter more than the law. After his last vote supporting the individual mandate, I wouldn’t want to predict how Roberts will vote in King v. Burwell. However, I don’t think publicly attacking the honor and intellect of the Chief Justice as a corporate shill is going to carry the day.
