Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Viewpoints: High Stakes At The High Court; Gov. Scott Insists Obama Needs Plan For States
Marketplace: Tracing The Obamacare Subsidy
On Wednesday, the Affordable Care Act faces its next test in front of the Supreme Court. This time, the justices will consider who is eligible to receive subsidies to help cover the cost of health insurance. That may sound technical, maybe even minor, but it’s high stakes — because the subsidies are at the heart of the law. (Dan Gorenstein, 3/3)
Bloomberg: Obamacare Will Not Kill The Supreme Court
Unsurprisingly, liberals are also mounting an all-out push to convince the Supreme Court that the very legitimacy of the institution is at stake. This is first-class flummery: What they really mean is that they will be very angry at the Supreme Court if the case goes against them. This is completely true. It is not completely true that the Supreme Court will somehow destroy itself, or its place in American society, if it offers a ruling that American liberals don't like. I realize that it may feel this way if you are an American liberal. But if the institution survived Roe v. Wade's "emanations and penumbras," and the sudden discovery after a couple of centuries that capital punishment violated the Constitution, it can certainly survive a narrow statutory case that overturns a still-unpopular program. (Megan McArdle, 3/4)
Politico: Obama Can’t Be Silent On Health Care’s Future
Prresident Obama came to Florida last week to give a big speech, but he didn’t say a word about how 1.6 million Floridians on the federal exchange under Obamacare would continue to access healthcare if the White House loses their argument in the King v. Burwell Supreme Court case over healthcare exchanges this month. Florida is one of 34 states without a state exchange. That means that 14 insurance companies in Florida receive about $5 billion annually from the federal government to offer Obamacare-compliant policies to about 90 percent of our 1.6 million Floridians on the federal exchange. We could assume from their silence that the White House wants 34 states to set up state exchanges if they lose at the Supreme Court; but state exchanges are collapsing under their own weight throughout the country. (Gov. Rick Scott, 3/4)
Bloomberg: Paul Ryan Thinks We're Fools
Just how stupid does Paul Ryan think we are? The Wisconsin Republican and two other House committee chairmen claim in an op-ed today that they are just about ready to propose an Obamacare “off-ramp" if the Supreme Court decides in King v. Burwell to destroy the federal health-insurance markets in more than half the states. No fooling around. “House Republicans have formed a working group to propose a way out for the affected states if the court rules against the administration.” A working group! No, I’m not impressed. (Jonathan Bernstein, 3/3)
The Washington Post: The Only Sensible Ruling On The Affordable Care Act
When the Supreme Court examines the Affordable Care Act again Wednesday, it will have several logical, principled paths to avoid tearing apart a law that has slowly but surely found its footing. It should take at least one of them. (3/3)
USA Today: Jobs Depend On Obamacare Defeat
As if Obamacare weren't problematic enough, two federal courts have found that the IRS unlawfully expanded the health care law's individual and employer mandates, by imposing them on tens of millions of Americans whom Congress exempted. On Wednesday, the Supreme Court will hear King v. Burwell, a case challenging that illegal and ongoing attempt to expand Obamacare outside the legislative process. (Michael F. Cannon, 3/3)
The Washington Post's Volokh Conspiracy: King V. Burwell — The VC’s Greatest Hits
The arguments upon which the plaintiffs’ case are based were first aired on the VC in this post from September 2011. Additional posts followed. It doesn’t make sense to link to them all, but here are some of the highlights from VC blogging on this case over the past few years. (Jonathan H. Adler, 3/3)
The Wall Street Journal's Washington Wire: CBO, Transparency And Obamacare’s Impact On The Deficit
Before a House rules change in January, CBO generally had not applied “dynamic scoring” to major legislation, or considered likely macro-economic effects when analyzing a bill’s potential impact on the deficit. On Friday, in response to follow-up questions from a January congressional hearing, CBO said that had it conducted such an analysis of Obamacare, it would have found that the bill reduced the federal deficit by less than its original projections. (Chris Jacobs, 3/3)
Los Angeles Times: How Do You Treat Pain When Most Of The World's Population Can't Get Opioids?
In the United States, where doctors write more than 250 million prescriptions for painkillers a year, the frequency of abuse and overdose represents a public health crisis. More than 15,000 Americans died from an overdose of prescription opioids in 2013. In other parts of the world, however, the crisis is that strong painkillers such as morphine aren't available at all. More than 70% of the world's population live in countries with no access to opioids. That has been the case in India, where I am a palliative care physician. Though the situation is slowly improving as result of reforms made in 2014, most people in India can't get an opioid painkiller even when they're dying of cancer. Like torture victims, these people say that their suffering is simply unbearable and that they would do anything to make it stop. (M.R. Rajagopal, 3/3)
The New York Times' Opinionator: Their Dying Wishes
I met Mr. C. because he was dying and his wife needed someone to sit with him Saturday nights while she attended Mass. I was a relatively new hospice volunteer, not long out of training, and Mr. C. was my first assignment with a patient at home, rather than in a hospital or health care facility. He had been given a diagnosis of Parkinson’s disease 25 years before I first entered their small apartment in the Baruch housing projects, which stand where the Williamsburg Bridge meets Manhattan. (Ann Neumann, 3/4)
