Are Obamacare premium subsidies going away?

Nope … In my opinion, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t a problem.

What the law says, intentional or not, is quite clear. Below is the text of the law (I added the bold). Whether this language is sloppy drafting or as some people claim, intentional to encourage states to establish exchanges, will be decided by the SCOTUS. One thing is clear, if the Court rules in favor of the strict interpretation of the words below, there will be quite a mess and a disaster for Obamacare and the millions of Americans who think they have “affordable” health care (for them personally anyway). States are already starting to position themselves to avoid this.

On many levels this law is a mess, well-intentioned or not. This is the product of one party jamming through a law (not well thought out or administered) simply because it had the power to do so. Clearly health care coverage and costs were and still are real problems, but we are a long way from long-term viable solutions to either problem.

(2) Premium assistance amount
The premium assistance amount determined under this subsection with respect to any coverage month is the amount equal to the lesser of—
(A) the monthly premiums for such month for 1 or more qualified health plans offered in the individual market within a State which cover the taxpayer, the taxpayer’s spouse, or any dependent (as defined in section 152) of the taxpayer and which were enrolled in through an Exchange established by the State under 1311 [1] of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, or

(B) the excess (if any) of—
(i) the adjusted monthly premium for such month for the applicable second lowest cost silver plan with respect to the taxpayer, over
(ii) an amount equal to 1/12 of the product of the applicable percentage and the taxpayer’s household income for the taxable year.

There is more to the story, than the legal wrangling. Take a look at this story on Bloomberg.com.

Obamacare’s Smoking Gun Fires Again

43 JUL 25, 2014 4:15 PM EDT
By Megan McArdle

Last night, the Competitive Enterprise Institute broke a heck of a story: A video showed Jonathan Gruber, one of the architects of the Affordable Care Act, supporting the plaintiff’s argument in Halbig v. Burwell.

For those who haven’t been obsessively reading this blog, this was the case in which the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit just ruled that premium subsidies could only legally be made available on state exchanges, not exchanges established by the federal government. Liberals have been arguing that this is a clearly ridiculous view of the law and one no reasonable person could endorse. Yet in the video, Gruber, a highly regarded economist who has done extensive work on the law for both the Barack Obama administration and state agencies, stated this as a fact. Moreover, he said that this would give states a clear incentive to establish exchanges — which is, coincidentally, exactly why the plaintiffs in Halbig have argued that Congress restricted subsidies to states.