Exhale: Court protects Obamacare subsidies in Michigan, 33 other states

Thanks to the Affordable Care Act, millions of Americans - including myself - can be confident that a serious illness won’t force us into bankruptcy. Subsidies are an important part of the ACA’s formula for success.

Three years after losing a Supreme Court ruling on the constitutionality of Obamacare - and with the help of Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette - conservatives made another attempt to gut the law through the Courts.

So much for that.

In a 6-3 ruling, the Court found that, yes, the subsidies do apply to states which take part in the federal exchange.

A couple of key liked from the ruling:

So when deciding whether the language is plain, the Court must read the words “in their context and with a view to their place in the overall statutory scheme.”

Here, the statutory scheme compels the Court to reject petitioners’ interpretation because it would destabilize the individual insurance market in any State with a Federal Exchange, and likely create the very “death spirals” that Congress designed the Act to avoid.

That's what the plaintiffs were trying to go for - at least that's what the cynic in me thinks. But despite the Court's known conservative lean (the majority from Citizens United is still there in its entirety), the latest attempt to dismantle life-saving Obamacare has run out of steam.

I stand by my prediction that in 40 years, the Tea Party of the 2050s will be holding up signs that say, "Get your government hands off my Obamacare!"