Over at the Incidental Economist, Nicholas Bagley asks, "Why are conservatives so happy about the exchange litigation?" My first reaction when I read the post was, what conservatives? He then unpacks the question: What do the challengers hope to accomplish with the exchange litigation? What would be the payoff of invalidating the IRS rule allowing people on federally facilitated exchanges to get tax credits? I don’t mean the ideological payoff—the satisfaction of winning a fight that you believe in. I mean the practical payoff. The exchange litigation isn’t a game: in the unlikely event that it succeeds, millions of middle-class Americans would lose their health insurance and millions more would have to pay a lot more for it. Even if you hate the ACA, how exactly is that a good thing? As it happens, I think about those middle-class Americans a lot, and have actually heard from one who shared his story with me. He's a man in Illinois with serious but manageable health issues, and has racked up some not-insubstantial medical bills. I hope to give him a forum to share his story here. Aside from the poor, people like him have been harmed the most by the federal and state government's counter-productive efforts to make health care more affordable. But that's as may be.
Reported by Forbes.com 20 hours ago.
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