http://fortune.com/2015/03/02/why-chief-justice-roberts-will-save-obamacare/Why Chief Justice Roberts will save Obamacare again
COMMENTARY by
Roger Parloff
March 2, 2015, 7:00 AM EST
The Supreme Court’s credibility is at stake in Wednesday’s argument
While the Obamacare challenge being argued before the U.S. Supreme Court Wednesday is not an easy case, it does hinge upon an inescapably far-fetched claim—one that, if it prevails, will cause deep, lasting damage to the court’s credibility in the eyes of about half the nation’s population.
I suspect Chief Justice John Roberts, Jr., won’t let that happen.
The challengers’ central argument in King v. Burwell is that the Affordable Care Act—the signature achievement of the Obama Administration and the most significant social legislation in a generation—must be given an interpretation that no legislator, no analyst, no journalist, and no pundit ever anticipated, aloud or in print, prior to its passage.
If accepted by the Court, this reading will immediately render the care provided by the Affordable Care Act unaffordable to about 7 million enrollees in at least 34 states. It would then likely force many health insurers to withdraw from the program (due to erroneous actuarial assumptions), while forcing those remaining to raise their premiums, in turn forcing still more enrollees to drop out, in turn forcing further premium hikes, and so on, in what health care economists refer to as a “death spiral.”
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