A Critical ObamaCare "Glitch"

According to the Wall Street Journal (h/t to Weasel Zippers) a huge "glitch" has been discovered in The Affordable Health Care Act (ObamaCare). The controversial law allows "tax credits and subsidies—to households purchasing coverage through new health-insurance exchanges." The problem is that these tax credits and subsidies apply only to health-insurance exchanges voluntarily formed by states on their own. If the states refuse to form these health-insurance exchanges voluntarily, the federal government can step in and form exchanges on behalf of the recalcitrant states. The glitch is that the law does not provide for tax credits and subsidies to be paid to households if the exchanges are formed by the federal government instead of the states.

In other words, if the states refuse to form exchanges voluntarily, and the federal government forms them instead, ObamaCare is effectively gutted of the very tax advantages and subsidies it was created to provide.

That's the good news. The bad news is that the Obama administration is trying to fix this critical glitch by administrative executive action, rather than returning the bill to Congress for the fix. What arrogance!

This glitch and Obama's attempt to fix it without Congressional authorization may be more important to the demise of ObamaCare than a Supreme Court decision.