Allah:
The Supreme Court, moving back into the deep controversy over the new health care law, agreed early Friday afternoon to decide how far the federal government can extend its program of subsidies to buyers of health insurance.
All diligent conservative blog readers know about the Halbig case by now, yes? I’ve written at least three posts about it so I won’t rehash the basics. Follow the links here if it’s new to you. It was a Category Five ObamaCare tornado in July when a three-judge panel on the D.C. Circuit agreed with conservatives and ruled that the text of the O-Care statute does not allow subsidies for people who bought their policies on the federal exchange, i.e. Healthcare.gov. Only if you bought your policy through an exchange created by a state are you eligible for help from Uncle Sam. That ruling is a nuclear bomb for the White House, obviously, because it would mean that the vast majority of new enrollees in O-Care would suddenly be on the hook for the full cost of their premiums. That would prove too expensive for many of those people, which would mean lots of dropped coverage and total chaos in the insurance industry. The D.C. Circuit ruling was huge, especially since the Fourth Circuit ruled the opposite way in a similar case decided the very same way as Halbig. That meant a circuit split. And the Supremes almost always take appeals where there’s a circuit split in order to resolve the dispute and set one uniform interpretation for all federal courts.
But then, six weeks later, the Halbig ruling went out the window. The full D.C. Circuit decided to rehear the case en banc, meaning that the three-judge panel’s ruling was no longer good law. Since the full court has more liberals than conservatives, it was a cinch that they’d overrule the panel and declare that federal O-Care customers were eligible for subsidies after all. Worse yet, once they did, it would mean there was no more circuit split. The conservative Supreme Court would no longer feel compelled to take the case, so they’d probably pass on it. And the Halbig line of attack on ObamaCare would be down the drain.
That’s why today’s granting of cert is a bolt from the blue. They’ve decided to trump the D.C. Circuit’s liberals by taking the case anyway, making the en banc hearing moot. ObamaCare fans are mortified:
