A Wisconsin conservative weighs in on Supreme Court’s Obamacare decision. In a 6-3 ruling on Thursday the high court upheld federal subsidies across the country. Rick Esenberg is with the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty.
“The law clearly says that these subsidies are available only in exchanges established by a state,” Esenberg said. “The majority engaged in what can only be called sort of very sophistical series of interpretive somersaults, Justice Scalia called them, in order to read the law to say what it doesn’t say.”
The court’s decision holds that the Affordable Care Act authorized federal tax credits for eligible people not only in states with their own health care exchanges, but also in 34 states – including Wisconsin – with federal marketplaces.
While Obamacare supporters are happy with the decision, Esenberg said people on the liberal side of politics may be unhappy in the future. “Now we have a decision of the United States Supreme Court which really provides warrant for this type of departure from normal rules of statutory construction – you read a statute and apply it as written – which are going to be cited in all sorts of other contexts, and may be used to used to do things that liberals don’t like.”