Obama Administration Loses Key Obamacare Case

A federal district court in Washington, D.C., ruled Thursday in favor of the U.S. House of Representatives’ challenge to the Obama administration’s implementation of part of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare. The act has been “revised” dozens of times by the administration since its passage in March 2010, leading the House to sue over the administration’s payment out of the U.S. Treasury of subsidies to insurance providers for providing cost-sharing reductions to certain policyholders, even though Congress explicitly refused to appropriate funds for these subsidies. As D.C. District Court Judge Rosemary Collyer explained in an opinion last fall, Section 1402 of the law “requires insurers to reduce the cost of insurance to certain, eligible statutory beneficiaries,” and the “federal government then offsets the added costs to insurance companies by reimbursing them with funds from the Treasury.” Read more....