Paul Krugman: The Court and the Three-Legged Stool
Still on a high over the Supreme Court ruling. One especially gratifying and praiseworthy feature of the majority opinion was that it explicitly invoked the logic of health reform to justify the “interpretive jiggery-pokery” (can this be made into a dance step?) that so infuriated Scalia. From the opinion:
The combination of no tax credits and an ineffective coverage requirement could well push a State’s individual insurance market into a death spiral. It is implausible that Congress meant the Act to operate in this manner. Congress made the guaranteed issue and community rating requirements applicable in every State in the Nation, but those requirements only work when combined with the coverage requirement and tax credits. It thus stands to reason that Congress meant for those provisions to apply in every State as well.
Yes! The Court (minus the three stooges) understood that the ACA is designed to work via the “three-legged stool” of guaranteed issue and community rating, the individual mandate, and subsidies. All three elements are needed to make it work, which is why it was obvious to anyone who paid any attention that the lawsuit was nonsense.
The thing is, a lot of people on the right have never grasped this logic, either because all they need to know is that Obamacare is eevil big government, or because of the Upton Sinclair principle of finding it difficult to understand something when your salary depends on your not understanding it. But the court majority did the basic policy analysis, which gratifies my inner wonk as well as my outer health reformer.
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/06/25/the-court-and-the-three-legged-stool/?smid=tw-NytimesKrugman&seid=auto&_r=0
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the privilege. I particularly love his first sentence...not afraid to share his emotions...I remember his blog after his cat died and he talked about crying...http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/10/29/doris-r-i-p-personal/
