Obamacare's Next Bout: More Legal Challenges
...On October 31, another federal district court in Richmond, Virginia, is scheduled to consider a similar motion in a case brought by four individual plaintiffs residing in that state. They claim that the IRS rule reduces their out-of-pocket cost of health coverage and effectively subjects them to the ACA’s individual mandate either to purchase more costly and comprehensive insurance than they would otherwise want, or to pay a penalty. The tax subsidies authorized by the IRS rule make such coverage through federal exchanges “affordable” and thereby subject to the individual mandate.

A related case in federal district court in Oklahoma first raised the IRS rule and federal exchange tax credits issue back in September 2012. On August 12, 2013, Judge Ronald White ruled that the state of Oklahoma’s legal challenge could move forward (after dismissing two of the five counts in the state’s amended complaint). Upcoming motions for summary judgment by either the state plaintiff or the federal government defendants have not yet been scheduled for a hearing, but most likely it will be before the end of this year....

Unions turn on Obamacare, but don't call them hypocrites
...In July, the presidents of the Teamsters, UFCWU and UNITE-HERE (combined membership: 2.9 million) wrote a letter to congressional Democrats saying that Obamacare will “destroy the very health and well-being of our members along with millions of other working Americans.”

“We have a problem,” they concluded. “You need to fix it.”...

...To which Terry O’Sullivan, president of the Laborers International Union, said he wanted the law “fixed, fixed, fixed” and, if not, “then I believe it needs to be repealed.”...

Obamacare's next shoe to drop: People buying coverage on the exchanges may owe more money than they're being told
...Problems with the way both categories of subsidies are being calculated will saddle consumers with unexpected costs.

On that first category of subsidies — “tax credits” meant to offset the premiums — it’s now clear that a lot of the current IT problems stem directly from the failure of Healthcare.gov to reliably calculate these payments.

Figuring out how much premium subsidy an individual or family is entitled to requires that the Healthcare.gov “hub” communicate across servers housed at state Medicaid agencies, the Internal Revenue Service, Health and Human Services, and the Department of Homeland Security (among other federal agencies). That necessary data sharing has proven too much for the site’s architecture to handle.

This is what’s causing so many applications to get kicked out — but what about those applications that make it all the way through? At least half a dozen states have already said publicly that their systems are coming up with the wrong calculations.

It’s a sure bet that some consumers who make it through the website’s maze, and enroll, will also have their subsidies calculated incorrectly....

Update: Judge Refuses to Dismiss Affordable Care Act Lawsuit
... Plaintiffs in the lawsuit, in which Competitive Enterprise Institute attorneys are assisting in coordinating, include a group of individuals and small business owners in six states who have sued over an IRS regulation imposed under the auspices of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) that will subject them to a series of penalties and force them to cut back employees’ hours, even though they are located in states that have refused to set up their own insurance exchanges. The complaint and preliminary injunction filings can be viewed at cei.org/halbig-v-sebelius.

The ACA authorizes health insurance subsidies to qualifying individuals in states that created their own healthcare exchanges. These subsidies trigger the employer mandate – a $2,000-per-employee penalty – and expose more people to the individual mandate. But without authorization from Congress, the IRS vastly expanded those subsidies to cover the 34 “refusenik” states that have decided not to set up such exchanges. The ACA plainly says businesses in these nonparticipating states should be free of the employer mandate, and the scope of the individual mandate should be reduced as well. The IRS rule expands both mandates and deprives states of the power given to them by Congress to exempt their residents and businesses from these requirements.

“The Obamacare statute is vast enough as it is,” said Sam Kazman, general counsel for CEI. “The IRS has no right to expand that statute even more to encompass states that have chosen to opt out of the insurance exchange program.”...