As many teachers can attest, learning is always easier when there’s food involved. That’s why we’re grateful that a federal judge served up a mouthwatering pizza analogy to help explain his stance in Tuesday’s complicated Obamacare ruling.
The question at the center of the ruling was whether an online healthcare marketplace or ‘exchange’ run by the federal government has the same authority as state exchanges to provide insurance subsidies.
Earlier on Tuesday, a U.S. circuit court dealt a blow to Obamacare when it ruled that the subsidies could only be offered through state exchanges, a decision which could potentially eliminate subsidies for millions of Americans. Several hours later, in a completely contradictory ruling, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit ruled that a federal exchange could also administer subsidies.
Senior Fourth Circuit Judge Andre Davis spiced up his concurring opinion with a pizza analogy that compares state exchanges to Pizza Hut, federal exchanges to Dominos, and ham and pepperoni to insurance subsidies.
“If I ask for pizza from Pizza Hut for lunch but clarify that I would be fine with a pizza from Domino’s, and I then specify that I want ham and pepperoni on my pizza from Pizza Hut, my friend who returns from Domino’s with a ham and pepperoni pizza has still complied with a literal construction of my lunch order,” Davis wrote.
So too, Davis wrote, because Obamacare permitted federal officials to set up exchanges when states failed to do so, the provision which authorizes state exchanges to offer subsidies should be understood to include federal exchanges as well.
Should the case advance to the Supreme Court, a likely outcome if the two rulings remain in contest, we can only hope that the written opinions dished out by the justices are as easy to digest as Davis’s.
