In California, not much. The continued allowance of the subsidies for those members in the Federal Exchange certainly solidifies the position of the Exchanges and thus, indirectly, the California Exchange. The problem in California is whatever the problems are in California, which at this time is the fact that they may not be able to meet their financial commitments. So California could go the way of federal Exchanges, which have just been validated. Good news?
What the decision does mean, of course, is that the Supreme Court has rebuffed the second challenge to the legality of the Affordable Care Act – which is now here to stay…at least until the next election. The media fallout included comments such as:
Judge Scalia said “Roberts performed somersaults of statutory interpretation to save the act” and the decision was “interpretive jiggery-pokery” and “pure applesauce” and added that words
“no longer have meaning if an Exchange that is not established by a State is established by a State” and, finally, that those justices who voted to retain the ACA did it for political reasons.
On NBC, Chuck Todd said “you saw Republican presidential candidates from Jeb Bush to Marco Rubio and in particular Ted Cruz all pledging to say that if elected, that this presidential election is now about the last chance you have to stop Obamacare or to repeal Obamacare”
Senator Lindsey Graham said the ruling “only reinforces why we need a President who will bring about real reform that repeals Obamacare and replaces it with a plan that expands consumer choice, increases coverage, delivers better value for the dollar and gives states more control without stifling job creation”
House Speaker John Boehner said “we will continue our efforts to repeal the law and replace it with patient centered solutions that meet the needs of seniors, small business owners and middle class families”
However, according to ABC’s Jon Karl “Publicly, Republicans are expressing outrage over this ruling, but privately, many Republican leaders are breathing a sigh of relief, because if this ruling had gone the other way, more than 6 million Americans, most of them from states with Republican governors, would have lost their healthcare subsidies, and Republicans were deeply divided about what to do about it” – a sentiment echoed by a reporter from the Washington Post