The Phony Legal Attack On Health Care

[SHRED]

On Wednesday, the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in one of the most anticipated cases of the term: King v. Burwell, a marvel of reverse-engineered legal absurdity that, if successful, will tear a huge hole in the Affordable Care Act and eliminate health insurance for millions of lower-income Americans — exactly the opposite of what the law was passed to do.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/01/opinion/sunday/the-phony-legal-attack-on-health-care.html


My questions for us here in California is should the worst happen in this case could our State setup it's own version of a single-payer system?

What would the backup plan be?

[JayhawkSD]

1. California would not be affected.

If the court rules for the plaintiff, subsidies would be cut off only for states that did not set up their own exchanges. California did set up its own exchange, so the subsidies for this state are not at risk.

[SHRED]

2. However...

...with subsidies gone in the other States wouldn't premiums go through the roof and therefore become unaffordable?

[JayhawkSD]

5. In a word, no.

Premiums are calculated on a state-by-state basis. Otherwise they would be the same everywhere, and they are emphatically not.

[SHRED]

6. I was under the assumption...

....that if these companies like Anthem and Blue Shield lost millions of subscribers in a subsidy collapse then they would need to make up the shortfall elsewhere. Like in States where they didn't lose customers?

[JayhawkSD]

7. A rather strange assumption.

The loss of subscribers means loss of revenue and loss of expense. They are not collecting premiums from the subscribers, but neither are they paying out benefits for those subscribers. Ratio of income to expense, that is to say profitability, is unchanged. There is no shortfall to make up.

[Cleita]

3. We had voted for a single payer system, which Gov. Brown was going to sign into law

except four of our State DEMOCRATIC Senators voted it down.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/01/31/1060214/-Four-gutless-Dems-kill-single-payer-in-California#

[daredtowork]

4. Ugh

Well now that we have the infrastructure up and running, perhaps we can re-introduce Single Payer in a worse case scenario situation. This would basically be saving the investment the taxpayers have already made.