Well, well, well...Republican Gov. Scott Walker just cannonballed the King plaintiff's chief argument
I don't have too much to add to this; the quote and video pretty much say it all, and Ian Millhiser did a great writeup:
...The plaintiffs’ premise in King is that Obamacare was never intended to offer credits to people in states with federally-run exchanges. Indeed, by reading one passage of the Affordable Care Act out of context, they claim that the law unambiguously states that only state-run exchanges are allowed to provide tax credits.
But that’s not the conclusion Walker reached after spending a couple of years considering the question. Rather, in his interview with theWall Street Journal, Walker explains that there is no practical difference whatsoever between state-run and federally-run exchanges:
WALKER: This really isn’t an exchange that the states run or even run in a partnership. The federal government determines what’s going to be covered. How it’s going to be covered. And the only distinction is whether or not a state can say that they’re running it, put up a sign that says they are running it. But, in the end, there’s no real substantive difference between a federal exchange, or a state exchange, or the in between, the hybrid, the partnership. And so I said, if I can’t run it, if I don’t have control over it, why would I take the responsibility of explaining to people something that I don’t have any control over.
See the video at the link. This really harkens back to my original "Denny's Grand Slam" workaround from July in which I suggested simply registering a domain name with a splashpage for $10 at GoDaddy with a big fat "enroll now!" button which repoints to Healthcare.Gov.
In fact, that's essentially how the "state exchanges" for Oregon, Nevada, New Mexico and Illinois are set up already.
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