Some Things To Keep Your Eye On

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While many of us are focused on the Obamacare contraception cases (Hobby Lobby and Conestoga) being argued in the Supreme Court, there's another case that's bubbled up to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals that could cause serious problems for Obamacare and the health insurance markets, due to the extreme views of one judge:

On Tuesday, while most court-watchers were fixated on the high profile Hobby Lobby litigation, a panel of three judges just a few miles away heard a much more sweeping attempt to destroy the Affordable Care Act. Should this lawsuit succeed, however, much more will fall than a single contentious law. If it succeeds, it could completely destroy much of the health insurance market and throw millions of Americans’ health care into chaos — and at least one judge who heard the case, Judge Raymond Randolph, appears poised to make this chaos a reality. 

The plaintiff's argument (which was rejected twice already at the trial level) involves whether Congress intended subsidies for people to purchase health insurance to be limited to State-run exchanges, or applied to the Federally-run exchange as well.  It would take a perverse, ideological reading by a perverse, ideological judge to rule that subsidies only applied to State-run exchanges -- but, did we mention Judge Randolph was appointed by Republican President "Poppy" Bush?

In the meantime, Alec MacGillis has more on this case as well as other Obamacare-sabotaging cases currently working their way through the judicial system.

(Cartoon:  Matt Davies, via gocomics.com)