Bill Press: High court out of order

Stop the presses! ObamaCare is back in the headlines. And it’s all good news. 

Eight million people signed up in the first year. Exchanges just reopened for renewals and new sign-ups. Consumers have more plans to choose from, at lower prices. The website is working. And according to the latest Gallup poll, 70 percent of Americans with coverage under the Affordable Care Act rate the care they’re getting as “good” or “excellent.” Only 9 percent say it’s “poor.”

{mosads}That’s good news for the American people. But it’s bad news for Republicans in Congress, some of whom are despondent, realizing they might never get rid of ObamaCare now. 

But they don’t have to worry. They won’t have to kill ObamaCare themselves. The Supreme Court, in another burst of judicial activism, may do it for them.

Some of us remember when “judicial activism” was a club Republicans used to clobber liberal judges appointed by Democrats, accusing them of legislating from the bench. No longer. Republicans are now masters of judicial activism. Indeed, this conservative Supreme Court is the most “judicially active” ever, starting with the appointment of George W. Bush as president by the Rehnquist court. The Roberts court in turn has already rewritten the rules of campaign finance in McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission. Now it has broadcast its intention to gut ObamaCare by agreeing to hear the case of King v. Burwell.

This case is totally without merit. Remember, the whole purpose of the Affordable Care Act is to make health insurance available to those who couldn’t afford it before. To that end, federal subsidies are provided to families who need help. Five million families have taken advantage of them so far. In King v. Burwell, ObamaCare opponents argue those subsidies should only be offered in states that have their own state-run health exchange —not in those 36 states where governors refused to open an exchange, where people must apply through the federal exchange. And they base their argument on a word game: that the language of the law making federal subsidies available “through an exchange established by the State” applies only to a state and not the federal government.

That argument is patently absurd. Clearly, under the law, “federal” subsidies must also be available on a “federal” exchange — as five of law’s original authors have stated in writing. Indeed, this case is so blatantly unconstitutional that any other judge would laugh it out of court. The only reason four Supreme Court justices would agree to take the case — even though not one appellate court has upheld it so far — is because they see an opportunity to do what Republicans in Congress have been unable to do: in effect, to repeal ObamaCare by gutting one of its most essential provisions and depriving 5 million American families of the health protection they now enjoy for the first time.

It makes you yearn for the good old days — when judges knew their job was to interpret existing law and not make new ones.

Press is host of “The Bill Press Show” on Free Speech TV and author of The Obama Hate Machine.