◼ Erstwhile Obamacare adviser Jonathan Gruber is going to play a key role in the Supreme Court battle over the law’s premium subsidies at HealthCare.gov. - Daily Caller
The disgraced adviser to the Obama administration on Obamacare may be best known for calling the American voters “stupid” and bragging about preventing transparency in the passage of the health-care law, but Gruber’s notoriously candid style first got him into trouble when multiple recordings emerged of him explaining that premium subsidies were restricted to state-run exchange alone.
The Supreme Court will hear a pivotal case, King v. Burwell, on March 4, they announced Monday. A decision is expected to follow in June.
The case revolves around a phrase repeated throughout the text of the Affordable Care Act which doles out premium subsidies to health-care exchanges “established by the State.” The plaintiffs in this case, along with several others that haven’t made it to the Supreme Court, argue that the law restricts those subsidies to state exchanges — which would cut off the payments to the 37 states that currently use HealthCare.gov.
The Obama administration is arguing that Congress didn’t intend to cut off the subsidies and that an IRS rule that allows the agency to hand out the payments to all 50 states is legal. While the case was in lower courts, Gruber signed a brief in support of the Obama administration’s position, but several recordings that surfaced over the summer display Gruber making the opposite argument. The embattled economist called the multiple instances a mistake — just a “speak-o.”
