Following are key excerpts from Investors Business Daily\’s take on yesterday\’s Supreme Court ruling on ObamaCare:
From the tone of his Obama-Care opinion, Chief Justice Roberts seems to believe he\’s spared a law that\’s working just fine. Wrong. With or without the court\’s help, ObamaCare is in desperate shape.
On the very first page of Robert\’s King v. Burwell opinion is a glaring mistake about ObamaCare. The chief justice explains how states that tried ObamaCare-like market changes – called “guaranteed issue” and “community rating” – saw their insurance markets caught in a death spiral as young and healthy dropped coverage and premiums shot up.
Roberts then claims that in 2006 “Massachusetts discovered a way to make the guaranteed issue and community rating requirements work” by adding an individual mandate and premium subsidies.
Before Roberts wrote those opening lines, he should have taken a look at what\’s happening in Massachusetts right now.
Next year, enrollees in Massachusetts face premium hikes that could be as high as 21%. This, mind you, in a state that already had among the highest premiums in the nation and was in no danger of losing ObamaCare subsidies no matter how the court ruled.
The same thing is going on around the country, with insurers proposing rate hikes that in some states top 50%. Oregon regulators are actually demanding insurers raise their ObamaCare premiums by double digits.
And all cite the same reason: ObamaCare\’s mix of mandates, subsidies and market regulations aren\’t working. The young and healthy aren\’t signing up as hoped, the insurance pools are more expensive than expected and so far higher premiums are needed.
And that, of course, is before the employee mandates kick in at the end of this year for the millions of companies with 50 – 100 full time employees.
Or will they? Since, dozens of times now, President Obama has unilaterally changed this legislation – which there is no constitutional basis for him to do, and which the same people who are supporting his actions would be calling for immediate impeachment of any Republican President who tried it – maybe he\’ll just forget about them until after the 2016 election.
It\’s good to be king. Especially when, at least on this one issue, you are anointed one by the Supreme Court.
