I guess I’ll have to tout this myself. Last week, the Hill newspaper put me on its list of “the 100 people you can’t ignore this fall if you’re wondering how events in Congress and the White House will play out.” Here’s the write-up: 

Michael Cannon Director of health policy studies at the Cato Institute

 

Think the Supreme Court has settled the question of ObamaCare’s legality? Not if Cannon has anything to say about it. Cannon is a tireless advocate for the argument that the IRS has illegally implemented the healthcare law’s insurance subsidies, which will help low-income households cover the cost of their premiums. 

 

His argument is that healthcare law, as written, does not allow for the subsidies to be used in healthcare marketplaces that are set up by the federal government.

 

He helped the state of Oklahoma file a lawsuit against the subsidies, and a group of small businesses filed a separate suit on the same grounds, in case Cannon’s runs into procedural roadblocks.

 

If the lawsuits Cannon has spearheaded are successful, they could have a devastating impact on the healthcare law. A final decision in favor would stop the flow of tax subsidies to people in more than half of the states, making ObamaCare far less attractive to consumers and stripping away much of the law’s promise of affordability.

Corrections and amplifications. The argument is as much Jonathan Adler’s as mine; we develop it together in this law-journal article. The argument is not that the IRS is illegally implementing otherwise lawful subsidies; it is that the IRS is trying to dispense some $700 billion in illegal subsidies that Congress expressly did not authorize, and impose illegal taxes on millions of employers and individual Americans starting in 2014; that the Obama administration is attempting to tax, borrow, and spend nearly $1 trillion without congressional authorization. Finally, I am neither a party nor counsel nor financier to either Pruitt v. Sebelius or Halbig v. Sebelius.

As it happens, there have been developments in each of those cases. On Friday, the Halbig plaintiffs (1) opposed the federal government’s motion to dismiss their complaint, and (2) filed their own motion asking the court to treat the government’s dilatory seven-week delay in responding to their motion for summary judgment as an implicit concession that the court should grant summary judgment to the plaintiffs. On Monday, the federal judge presiding over Pruitt just granted the state of Oklahoma standing to challenge the IRS’s action. I’ll have more to say in subsequent posts. 

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