Obamacare Benchwarmers Working the Refs Again
14th February 2015
The Wall Street Journal mentions this morning that our now-socialized health care sector is filing panicked Supreme Court briefs in the upcoming King v. Burwell case that emphasize not legal arguments but the disruption to their business model if Obamacare’s state subsidies are struck down. In other words, they mostly submitted policy briefs to the Supreme Court—not legal briefs. I wonder if their lawyers gave them the appropriate policy wonk discount, since we work cheap compared to K Street lawyers. Somehow I doubt it.
Meanwhile, it is widely thought that in the first Obamacare case, NFIB v. Sebelius, the supporters of Obamacare “worked the refs”—specifically that a concentrated campaign to affect Chief Justice Roberts’s views worked to get him to change his mind by appealing to his jurisprudential minimalism, and to his concern for the political reputation of the Court. Who know if this actually contributed to Roberts changing his mind about the case and casting the deciding vote to uphold most of Obamacare, but that’s water under the bridge now.