With its surprising decision to hear oral argument on an ObamaCare subsidy challenge next spring, the Supreme Court of the United States is causing a flurry of activity as some states try to shore up their status ahead of a potentially costly decision.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe consulting firm Avalere Health estimates that nearly 5 million people would see their premiums spike 76 percent, on average, if the Supreme Court strikes down subsidies in states that don\u2019t operate their own exchanges,\u201d reports Governing<\/a>. \u201cThat estimate assumes a greater number of exchanges are considered federal, not state-based, but the question of what exactly constitutes a \u2018state-based\u2019 health exchange is murky.\u201d<\/p>\n How murky?<\/p>\n \u201cStates have the option of running their own exchange completely (a state-based exchange), managing aspects of plan design or consumer outreach (a partnership exchange) or leaving everything to the federal government (a federally facilitated exchange),\u201d according to the website.<\/p>\n Predictably, the federal Department of Health and Human Services isn\u2019t divulging its exact criteria for categorizing an exchange, a stance that leaves states without a clear picture of how to prepare for a possible elimination of subsidies to residents.<\/p>\n Some states, like Nevada and Oregon that switched to Healthcare.gov \u2013 the federal website \u2013 are still considered to have state-based exchanges because they retain control over functions like plan approval, data collection and quality reporting. Others, like Utah and Mississippi, also fall into the state-based category because they host small business exchanges (but not individual exchanges).<\/p>\n So, the bottom line appears to be this: If the Supreme Court axes ObamaCare subsidies per the law\u2019s text<\/a> and intent<\/a>, there\u2019s a good chance President Barack Obama\u2019s political appointees will engage in verbal gymnastics to find ways to define \u201cstate-based exchanges\u201d in whatever manner best suits them.<\/p>\n No matter. Getting something fundamentally better than ObamaCare isn\u2019t the Supreme Court\u2019s job anyway. Best to pocket the subsidy win if it comes and work toward a policy consensus among the political branches that delivers real reform.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" With its surprising decision to hear oral argument on an ObamaCare subsidy challenge next spring, the Supreme Court of the United States is causing a flurry of activity as some states try to shore up their status ahead of a potentially costly decision. \u201cThe consulting firm Avalere Health estimates that nearly 5 million people would […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[3007,3308,186,1829,35,2249,92],"class_list":["post-21873","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-posts","tag-exchange","tag-health","tag-hhs","tag-insurance","tag-obamacare","tag-subsidy","tag-supreme-court"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21873","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21873"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21873\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21880,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21873\/revisions\/21880"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21873"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21873"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21873"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}