Say goodbye to Obamacare...

[shaayecanaan]

21. Interesting article

Those who support the law as it’s been interpreted up to now—Democrats, basically—say it’s obvious that this later section means that these federally created exchanges then stand in the shoes of the state-established exchanges for all purposes.

And everyone would have to agree were it not for a problem deep within the bowels of the subprovisions defining how to compute the tax credits that health plan enrollees are entitled to under the law. (These tax credits are “advanced” to the taxpayer and then paid directly by the government to the health insurer, so the enrollee experiences them only in the form of lower premiums.)

The amount of the tax credit, the law says, is to be based on something called the “premium assistance credit amount,” and that, in turn, is based on the number of “coverage months” the taxpayer incurred that year, and a “coverage month,” finally, is defined as a month that the taxpayer spent enrolled in a health plan “through an Exchange established by the State.” (Emphasis added.)

Do you see the problem? Taken literally, the four italicized words seem to mean that there’s actually no tax credit available at all for anyone enrolled in a plan obtained through an exchange set up by the federal government, because that’s not an Exchange “established by the State”! And since 34 (mainly red) states declined to set up their own exchanges, most of the millions of people that everyone had assumed would be the law’s beneficiaries are actually ineligible for the tax credit that was supposed to make their care affordable.

Christ, what a mess. You have to feel sorry for the poor slob who actually drafted that provision. I have to say though, its probably best that this issue is sorted out now, because its only going to come up later.