Obamacare ruling ignores Congress' intent: Our view

Obamacare supporters should hope the law has nine lives, because it may have used up another one Tuesday. A panel from the second most powerful court in the country ruled, in effect, that nearly 5 million people who got their health insurance through the federal insurance exchanges this year weren't entitled to subsidies.

Obamacare's subsidies are what make coverage affordable for many of the people the law requires to buy health insurance — hence the law's name: the Affordable Care Act. Taking those subsidies away could make insurance too expensive for millions of low- and middle-income people, crippling a crucial part of the law.

The ruling, which will have no impact on participants while it is appealed, is the latest in a series of relentless assaults on Obamacare. These include last year's government shutdown, scores of votes by House Republicans to kill the law, and the 2012 Supreme Court challenge that left it alive but severely restricted its Medicaid expansion provision.

Tuesday's decision turns on a brief phrase, buried deep in the Affordable Care Act's hundreds of pages, that seems to restrict subsidies only to state health exchanges. That's a problem, because ​​ all but 16 states and the District of Columbia opted not to run their own insurance marketplaces and deferred to the federal government to do it for them.

A three-judge panel on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit agreed with challengers that the law means what that phrase says. The D.C. Circuit is widely viewed as second in influence only to the Supreme Court, which is where this case will likely end up.

The 2-1 opinion — two Republican-appointed judges outvoted one judge appointed by a Democratic president — was not what the Obama administration wanted, but it was hardly fatal. It could be overturned on appeal to the full circuit court.

Even if it isn't, this case is just one of four separate challenges that all make the same argument, all of which are still lumbering toward a final resolution. Whatever happens this year, no one will lose subsidies anytime soon, and a final ruling is probably at least a couple of years away.

Still, this is a serious challenge, and the fact that the three-judge panel ruled the way it did is disappointing. The other courts to rule on this challenge, including a federal appeals court in Richmond later on Tuesday, threw it out — appropriately, in our view.

These courts acknowledged that the law says subsidies are to go to people who enroll "through an exchange established by the state." But these courts also noted that federal precedent requires that they read not just those seven words, but the entire law and the history of the congressional process of writing it. And when they did that, these courts concluded that Congress never meant to restrict subsidies only to state exchanges.

That's entirely right. There's no evidence from the endless debate over the law that its Democratic architects wanted to give Republican governors and legislatures effective veto power over Obamacare, which they'd have if all it took to cripple the law was to refuse to set up a state insurance exchange.

Legislation as broad and ambitious as the Affordable Care Act always includes unintentional errors and inconsistencies, and the usual practice is for Congress to write a "technical corrections" measure to fix them. Congress could easily clear up unintended problems like this, and in the process even write in improvements, such as a stronger section on tort reform. But with Republicans determined to kill the law altogether, there's simply no chance for a measure like that.

Too bad. Rather than working to improve the law, which is defying predictions of failure, Republicans have relentlessly demonized it, deliberately ignoring the growing evidence that it's working to help people who've never had the access to health care that decent insurance brings.

In this case, the legal challenge came from four people who object to the law's requirement that they buy insurance. One of the plaintiffs is a man who makes $20,000 a year and whose after-subsidy cost of an entire year's worth of insurance would be $20.

Ironically, if he and the other plaintiffs prevail, they'll still be able to go to emergency rooms that will have to treat them, passing the bills on to taxpayers. Ending this kind of parasitic free-riding, by people who refuse to get insurance even when they can afford it, was one of the reasons for Obamacare in the first place.

USA TODAY's editorial opinions are decided by its Editorial Board, separate from the news staff. Most editorials are coupled with an opposing view — a unique USA TODAY feature.