Tag: jonathan adler

Ohio, Missouri Introduce the Health Care Freedom Act 2.0

By
Michael F. Cannon

Ohio Reps. Ron Young (R-Leroy Twp.) and Andy Thompson (R-Marietta), and Missouri Sen. John Lamping (R-St. Louis County), have introduced legislation—we call it the Health Care Freedom Act 2.0—that would suspend the licenses of insurance carriers who accept federal subsidies through one of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act’s (PPACA) health insurance Exchanges. At first glance, that might seem to conflict with or otherwise be preempted by the PPACA. Neither is the case. Instead, the HCFA 2.0 would require the IRS to implement the PPACA as Congress intended.

Here’s why. Under the PPACA, if an employer doesn’t purchase a government-prescribed level of health benefits, some of its workers may become eligible to purchase subsidized coverage through a health insurance “exchange.” When the IRS issues the subsidy to an insurance company on behalf of one of those workers, that payment triggers penalties against the employer. Firms with 100 employees could face penalties as high as $140,000.

Congress authorized those subsides, and therefore those penalties, only in states that establish a health insurance Exchange. If a state defers that task to the federal government, as 33 states including Missouri and Ohio have done, the PPACA clearly provides that there can be no subsidies and therefore no penalties against employers. The IRS has nevertheless announced it will implement those subsidies and penalties in the 33 states that have refused to establish Exchanges. Applying those measures in non-establishing states violates the clear language of the PPACA and congressional intent. See Jonathan H. Adler and Michael F. Cannon, “Taxation Without Representation: The Illegal IRS Rule to Expand Tax Credits Under the PPACA,” Health Matrix: Journal of Law-Medicine 23 (2013): 119-195.

Whether legal or illegal, those penalties also violate the freedoms protected by the Health Care Freedom Amendment to Ohio’s Constitution, and Missouri’s original Health Care Freedom Act, which voters in each state ratified by overwhelming majorities. The Ohio (HB 91) and Missouri (SB 473) bills would protect employers and workers from those penalties, and thereby uphold the freedoms enshrined in Missouri statute and Ohio’s Constitution, by suspending the licenses of insurance carriers that accept those subsidies.

The question arises whether the PPACA would preempt such a law. It does not. The HCFA 2.0 neither conflicts with federal law, nor attempts to nullify federal law, nor is preempted by federal law.

The HCFA 2.0 concerns a field of law—insurance licensure—that has traditionally been a province of the states under their police powers. In preemption cases, courts “start with the assumption that the historic police powers of the States were not to be superseded by the Federal Act unless that was the clear and manifest purpose of Congress.” Wyeth v. Levine, 129 S. Ct. 1187, 1194-95 (2009). Courts then must determine whether the state law in question is nevertheless trumped by express or implied federal preemption.

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Topics: 
General, Government and Politics, Health Care, Law and Civil Liberties

Issa: IRS Is Violating ObamaCare by Illegally Taxing Employers in 33 States

By
Michael F. Cannon

House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform chairman Darrell Issa (R-CA) writes in the Washington Examiner: 

To combat the sticker shock of Obamacare’s numerous requirements on health insurance premiums, the law creates expensive subsidies, which take the form of tax credits, for individuals who purchase a government-approved insurance plan. In order to avoid the appearance of a federal takeover of health care, the law ties the availability of these premium tax credits to an “Exchange established by the State.” Importantly, the way the law was written, if tax credits are not available within a state, then the expensive employer mandate tax does not apply to companies within that state.

With so many states refusing to play the role the law’s drafters envisioned, the Obama administration has embarked on a legally dubious effort to bypass the plain language of the law. Obama’s IRS has issued a rule that delivers the expensive subsidies through federally run exchanges as well. If it stands, this extralegal rule will undermine the decision-making role offered to states by Obamacare, and cause hundreds of billions of dollars of taxes and spending not authorized by the president’s health care law…

The language that limits tax credits to state-established exchanges should not now shock Obamacare’s supporters. Early in 2009, legal scholar Timothy Jost, one of Obamacare’s leading proponents, explicitly suggested linking the tax credits to state-established exchanges as a way to encourage states to set up the exchanges.

The Obama administration may be surprised and disappointed that many states have not found the refundable tax credit to be a sufficient incentive to set up their own exchanges, exposing their citizens to the other taxes and penalties associated with the law. But this does not justify the administration’s effort to ignore the plain language of the law that Obama championed and signed.

For more on this issue, see Jonathan Adler’s and my Health Matrix article, “Taxation Without Representation: The Illegal IRS Rule to Expand Tax Credits Under the PPACA.”

Topics: 
Government and Politics, Health Care

How Virginia Businesses Are Struggling under Obama’s Illegal Employer Tax

By
Michael F. Cannon

An article in today’s Washington Post highlights the costs ObamaCare imposes on small businesses, and the dampening effect of the law on jobs and economic growth.

What the article does not reveal is that because the three businesses it examines are located in in Virginia, which has opted not to establish a health insurance “exchange,” Congress exempted these firms ObamaCare’s employer mandate. Yet the IRS is trying to impose that tax on firms in Virginia and 33 other states, even though Congress expressly forbids the agency from doing so. (Jonathan Adler and I explain here.)

An excerpt from the Post article.

Jody Manor has run a small cafe and catering company for nearly three decades in Old Town Alexandria, only a few blocks from where he was born. Six years ago he purchased an adjoining building, and more recently he started searching for a second location.

Whether he moves forward with expansion depends on the price tag of the requirements mandated by the Affordable Care Act, President Obama’s signature health-care initiative.

Manor’s company employs 45 people. If he brings in just five more, his business would soon be subject to new minimum coverage standards under the 2010 law — and he does not know whether his current health plan would meet this threshold of coverage or how his premiums might be affected.

“These changes are less than a year away, and I still have no information about how much our premiums are going to cost,” said Manor, owner of Bittersweet Catering, Cafe and Bakery. “It definitely gives me pause when thinking about adding another location.”

Nearly three years after the health-care law was passed…the picture remains anything but clear for small-business owners, some of whom have been warned that their premiums may spike and that their current coverage may fall short.

“There is tremendous confusion and fear among many of my competitors and other business owners in my network, particularly about what you have to cover and how you have to report,” said Hugh Joyce, owner of James River Air Conditioning in Richmond. “In speaking to them, I am convinced that the primary reason we aren’t seeing a robust economic recovery is the uncertainty and costs associated with this health-care law.”…

The situation only gets thornier for Joyce, who also owns a small art gallery with one full-time employee. Rules proposed this year by the Internal Revenue Service suggest that workers from separate firms owned by the same person will be totaled to determine an employer’s ultimate size. If so, Joyce will probably shift his gallery employee to part-time hours to avoid having to add coverage at his second business…

Meanwhile, many employers have seen their premiums rise or plans disappear as insurers prepare for the coming changes.

One in eight small-business owners who responded to a survey by the National Federation of Independent Business said their health insurance providers had notified them that their plans would be terminated. A study released last week by Adecco, a human resources consulting firm, showed that nearly a third of employers said they stopped hiring or cut their workforce because of the law…

“If our cost trajectory continues, in five to seven years the premiums will eat up all my net profit,” Joyce said. “It’s already hard out there right now, particularly for small and medium-size businesses. This may be the straw that breaks the camel’s back.”

I could “excerpt” the whole thing. Better that you just go there and read it.

Topics: 
General, Government and Politics, Health Care

ObamaCare Debate Challenge: Lawrence Wasden Edition

By
Michael F. Cannon

Congress empowered states to block major provisions of ObamaCare, including its subsidies and employer mandate. All states need do to is refuse to create a health insurance “exchange.” (And a whopping 34 states, accounting for two-thirds of the U.S. population, have done just that.)

Supporters of the law are doing their level best to deny what the law says. It has now been one full month since I challenged anyone and everyone to debate with me the powers Congress gave states to block these and other parts of the law. My debate-challenge video (embedded below) has nearly 3,000 views on YouTube. And how many brave ObamaCare supporters have accepted my challenge? Zero.

The latest to deny what the law says is Idaho Attorney General Lawrence Wasden, who has issued an opinion that Congress did not give Idaho these powers. So I hereby issue my challenge directly to Wasden, or any member of his staff, or his entire staff: I say you are misreading the law, and doing Idaho legislators, employers, and taxpayers a great disservice. So let’s have a debate over whether Congress allows Idaho to block ObamaCare’s employer mandate, and whether you are accurately portraying the law to Idaho legislators. 

An ObamaCare Debate Challenge (Michael F. Cannon)

Update: Washington & Lee University law professor Timothy Jost protests that he debated this issue with both Jonathan Adler and me back in October 2012. True enough, Jost is the only person who has agreed to debate this issue with us live. Here’s the video of that debate. Decide for yourself who bested whom. I meant my “zero” count to be prospective, and would be happy to debate Jost again.

Topics: 
General, Government and Politics, Health Care, Law and Civil Liberties

‘By Far the Broadest and Potentially Most Damaging of the Legal Challenges’ to ObamaCare

By
Michael F. Cannon

That’s how Kaiser Health News describes the legal challenge that Jonathan Adler and I outline in this paper and that Oklahoma attorney general Scott Pruitt has filed in federal court:

Supporters of the law scoff at the arguments…

But, confident of their case, some health law opponents, including Jonathan Adler of Case Western Reserve Law School, Michael Cannon of the libertarian Cato Institute and National Affairs editor Yuval Levin, are urging Republican-led governments to refuse to set up the online insurance purchasing exchanges, which would, as the argument goes, make their residents ineligible for the tax credits and subsidies. They say that this step also would gut the so-called employer mandate, which the law says will take effect in states where residents are eligible for such assistance…

As even some health law supporters concede, the claim that Congress denied to the federal exchanges the power to distribute tax credits and subsidies seems correct as a literal reading of the most relevant provisions. Those are sections 1311, 1321, and 1401, which provide that people are eligible for tax credits and subsidies only if “enrolled … through an Exchange established by the state” [emphasis added].

It’s technically not correct to say that Oklahoma’s complaint is a challenge to ObamaCare, however. That complaint does not challenge a single jot or tittle of the statute. Oklahoma is asking a federal court to force the IRS to follow the statute, and to prevent the Obama administration from imposing taxes on Oklahoma residents whom Congress expressly exempted. Oklahoma’s complaint is indeed “the broadest and potentially most damaging of the legal challenges” related to ObamaCare. But think about it: if the only way to save ObamaCare from such a fate is to give the president extra-constitutional powers to tax and spend money without congressional authorization, just how unstable is this law? And is it really worth saving?

Also, the article is a few months behind on the debate over congressional intent, and our ongoing debate with Timothy Jost (who has reversed himself on quite a few issues).

But overall, a good article.

Topics: 
General, Government and Politics, Health Care

The IRS’s Illegal ObamaCare Taxes, Bagenstos Edition

By
Michael F. Cannon

As I posted a week ago today, Jonathan Adler and I have a paper titled, “Taxation Without Representation: The Illegal IRS Rule to Expand Tax Credits Under the PPACA.” Our central claims are:

  1. The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act explicitly restricts its “premium-assistance tax credits” (and thus the “cost-sharing subsidies” and employer- and individual-mandate penalties those tax credits trigger) to health insurance “exchanges” established by states;
  2. The IRS has no authority to offer those entitlements or impose those taxes in states that opt not to create Exchanges; and
  3. The IRS’s ongoing attempt to impose those taxes and issue those entitlements through Exchanges established by the federal government is contrary to congressional intent and the clear language of the Act.

We hope to post an updated draft of our paper, with lots of new material, soon.

At the Disability Law blog and Balkinization, University of Michigan law professor Samuel Bagenstos writes that our claims are “deeply legally flawed.”

Like others before him, Bagenstos’s main argument in support of the IRS reduces to the absurd claim that the federal government can establish an Exchange that is established by a state. He also offers two new arguments. Each is a non sequitur, and like his main argument is contradicted by the express language of the statute.

As I have written before:

[T]he statute is crystal clear. It explicitly and laboriously restricts tax credits to those who buy health insurance in Exchanges “established by the State under section 1311.” There is no parallel language – none whatsoever – granting eligibility through Exchanges established by the federal government (section 1321).

(Bagenstos claims the statute’s tax-credit-eligibility provisions use the phrase “established by the State under section 1311” only twice. He neglects to mention: how the eligibility provisions refer to those limiting phrases an additional five times; that there is no language contradicting or creating any ambiguity about the limitation they create; and that the statute also restricts its “cost-sharing subsidies” to situations where “a credit is allowed” under those eligibility rules. At the risk of repeating myself, the eligibility rules for the credits and subsidies are so tightly worded, they seem designed to prevent precisely what the IRS is trying to do.)

Bagenstos correctly notes that Section 1321 directs the federal government to create Exchanges within states that fail to create their own. Like others before him, he takes that directive to mean that the phrase “established by the State under section 1311” in fact ”does not have the exclusionary meaning” you might think. The statute authorizes tax credits through federal Exchanges, he argues, because federal Exchanges are ”established by the State under section 1311.” The federal government, it turns out, can establish an Exchange that is established by a state.

Like others before him, Bagenstos finesses the absurdity of that claim by arguing that Section 1321 provides that a federal Exchange ”will stand in the shoes of a state-operated exchange.” So far as I can tell, the “stand in the shoes” trope was first advanced by Judy Solomon of the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities. It is based on a 180-degree misreading of Section 1321. If a state chooses not to dance, Section 1321 doesn’t instruct the federal government to step inside (read: commandeer) the state’s dancing shoes. It directs the federal government put on its own dancing shoes, and to follow all the dance steps listed in Title I. Since the language restricting tax credits to state-created Exchanges appears in—you guessed it—Title I, federal Exchanges are bound by that restriction.

Bagenstos’s second argument is that since it was not necessary for Congress to restrict tax credits to state-created Exchanges to overcome the “commandeering problem,” the statute does not do so. But that’s a non sequitur. Just because Congress didn’t have to do something doesn’t mean Congress didn’t do it. The express language of the statute says Congress did it.

Bagenstos’s third argument is that because the Senate Finance Committee didn’t have to restrict tax credits to state-created Exchanges in order to have jurisdiction to direct states to create them, the Committee-approved language—which is now law—must not do so. Again, that’s a non sequitur. And not only does the express language of the statute impose that restriction, but Senate Finance Committee chairman Max Baucus (D-MT) admitted that’s what he was doing.

Along the way, Bagenstos contradicts himself, Baucus, and Timothy Jost by categorically claiming, “Nor is there any reason to think that Congress would have intended to treat participants in state- and federally-operated exchanges differently,” while conceding the commandeering problem and the Finance Committee’s limited jurisdiction are two reasons why Congress might have intended to do so.

Bagenstos’s interpretation of the statute violates the “mere surplusage” canon of statutory interpretation. It violates the expressio unius est exclusio alterius canon of statutory interpretation. It violates common sense.

Like others before him, Bagenstos offers no rebuttal to Baucus’s admission that the  statute means exactly what it says, and nothing whatsoever from the legislative history that supports the IRS’s attempt to violate the express language of the statute by imposing taxes that Congress never authorized.

Topics: 
General, Government and Politics, Health Care, Law and Civil Liberties, Regulatory Studies

Why ‘Obamacare’s Critics Refuse to Give Up’

By
Michael F. Cannon

Jonathan Adler and I have a paper titled, “Taxation Without Representation: The Illegal IRS Rule to Expand Tax Credits Under the PPACA.” Our central claims are:

  1. The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act explicitly restricts its “premium-assistance tax credits” (and thus the “cost-sharing subsidies” and employer- and individual-mandate penalties those tax credits trigger) to health insurance “exchanges” established by states;
  2. The IRS has no authority to offer those entitlements or impose those taxes in states that opt not to create Exchanges; and
  3. The IRS’s ongoing attempt to impose those taxes and issue those entitlements through Exchanges established by the federal government is contrary to congressional intent and the clear language of the Act.

Over at The New Republic’s blog The Plank, my friend Jonathan Cohn says this is “preposterous”:

No sentient being following the health care debate could argue, in good faith, that Obamacare’s architects intended for the federal government to set up exchanges without subsidies. It would completely subvert the law’s intent.

It appears my friend does not know the statute, the legislative history, or what Congress’ intent was.

Cohn writes that the statute is “a little fuzzy” on this issue. Quite the contrary: the statute is crystal clear. It explicitly and laboriously restricts tax credits to those who buy health insurance in Exchanges “established by the State under section 1311.” There is no parallel language – none whatsoever – granting eligibility through Exchanges established by the federal government (section 1321). The tax-credit eligibility rules are so tightly worded, they seem designed to prevent precisely what the IRS is trying to do.

ObamaCare supporters just know that can’t be right. It must have been an oversight. Congress could not have written the law that way. It doesn’t make any sense. Those provisions must take effect in federal Exchanges for the law to work. Why would Congress give states the power to blow the whole thing up??

The answer is that Congress didn’t have any choice. Congress intended for ObamaCare to work this way because this was the only way that ObamaCare could become law.

  • The Senate bill had to have state-run Exchanges in order to win the essential votes of moderate Democrats. Without state-run Exchanges, it would not have passed.
  • In order to have state-run Exchanges, the bill needed some way to encourage states to create them without “commandeering” the states. In early 2009, well before House and Senate Democrats introduced their bills, an influential law professor named Timothy Jost advised congressional Democrats of one way to get around the commandeering problem: “Congress could invite state participation…by offering tax subsidies for insurance only in states that complied with federal requirements…”. Both the Finance bill and the HELP bill made premium assistance conditional on state compliance. Senate Democrats settled on the Finance language, which passed without a vote to spare. (Emphasis added.)
  • The Finance Committee had even more reason to condition tax credits on state compliance: it doesn’t have direct jurisdiction over health insurance. Conditioning the tax credits on state compliance was the only way the Committee could even consider legislation directing states to establish Exchanges. Committee chairman Max Baucus admitted this during mark-up.
  • Then something funny happened. Massachusetts voters sent Republican Scott Brown to the Senate, partly due to his pledge to prevent any compromise between the House and Senate bills from passing the Senate. With no other options, House Democrats swallowed hard and passed Senate bill. (They made limited amendments through the reconciliation process. These amendments did not touch the tax-credit eligibility rules, and indeed strengthen the case against the IRS.)

A law limiting tax credits to state-created Exchanges, therefore, is exactly what Congress intended, because Congress had no other choice. On the day Scott Brown took office, any and all other approaches to Exchanges ceased to embody congressional intent. If Congress had intended for some other approach to become law, there would be no law. What made it all palatable was that it never occurred to ObamaCare supporters that states would refuse to comply. The New York Times reports, “Mr. Obama and lawmakers assumed that every state would set up its own exchange.”

Oops.

The only preposterous parts of this debate are the legal theories that the IRS and its defenders have offered to support the Obama administration’s unlawful attempt to create entitlements and impose taxes that Congress clearly and intentionally did not authorize. (But don’t take my word for it. Read the statute. Read our paper. Read this, and this. Watch this video and our debate with Jost. Click on our links to all the stuff the IRS and Treasury and Jost have written.) I wonder if Cohn would tolerate such lawlessness from a Republican administration.

Cohn further claims the many states that are refusing to create Exchanges are “totally sticking it to their own citizens” and people who encourage them “are essentially calling upon states to block their citizens from receiving federal tax breaks, worth as much as several thousand dollars per person. Aren’t conservatives and libertarians supposed to be the party that likes giving tax money back to the people?” Seriously?

  • Fourteen states have enacted statutes or constitutional amendments – often by referendum, often by huge margins – that prohibit state employees from directly or indirectly participating in an essential Exchange function: implementing employer or individual mandates. In those instances, the voters have spoken.
  • Only 22 percent of the budgetary impact of these credits and subsidies is actual tax reduction, and the employer- and individual-mandate penalties triggered by those tax “credits” wipe out most of that. The other 78 percent is new deficit spending. So what we’re really talking about here is $700 billion of new deficit spending.
  • When states refuse to establish Exchanges, they block that new spending, which reduces the deficit and the overall burden of government.
  • In addition, those states exempt their employers from the employer mandate (a tax of $2,000 per worker) and exempt millions of taxpayers from the individual mandate (a tax of $2,085 on families of four earning as little as $24,000).

Who’s for tax cuts now?

Here’s what I think is really bothering Cohn and other ObamaCare supporters. The purpose of those credits and subsidies is to shift the cost of ObamaCare’s community-rating price controls and individual mandate to taxpayers, so that consumers don’t notice them. When states prevent such cost-shifting, they’re not increasing the cost of ObamaCare – they’re revealing it.

And that’s what worries Cohn. If the full cost of ObamaCare appears in people’s health insurance premiums, people will rise up and demand that Congress get rid of it. Cohn isn’t worried about states “sticking it to their citizens.” He’s worried about states sticking it to ObamaCare.

The title of Cohn’s blog post is, “Obamacare’s Critics Refuse to Give Up.” At least we can agree on that much.

Topics: 
General, Government and Politics, Health Care

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