Share the View: The Heart of the Obamacare Case

Share The View

THE LATEST OPINIONS FROM BLOOMBERG VIEW

MARCH 5, 2015 bloombergview.com

HEALTH-CARE REFORM Noah Feldman: "Three years ago, in the first Affordable Care Act case before the U.S. Supreme Court, Chief Justice John Roberts invented a legal doctrine that he memorably called the 'gun to the head.' During oral arguments on Wednesday in the second ACA case, Justice Anthony Kennedy aimed the gun at Roberts." Read more... Feldman: "Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg opened the King v. Burwell argument Wednesday in the U.S. Supreme Court by asking whether the challengers are actually being injured by the Affordable Care Act and have standing to bring the case. Then something weird happened." Read more... Feldman: "Beyond the technicalities of guns to the head and standing, a profound issue lies at the heart of the King v. Burwell case that the U.S. Supreme Court heard Wednesday -- and for a few shining moments, the justices debated it. That question can actually be put rather simply: What should happen when Congress writes a law with some internal incoherence?" Read more... Megan McArdle: "Someone on Twitter explained that this case really is different because if the Supreme Court rules the wrong way, thousands of people will die. I find this explanation wholly unconvincing, for two reasons." Read more... FEDERAL RESERVE The Editors: "The complete transcripts of the Federal Reserve's 2009 policy deliberations, released Wednesday, may be a treat for historians of the Great Recession. It was an eventful year, after all, as the economy hit bottom and the government was still scrambling to rescue U.S. banks. But why did we have to wait five years for them to come out?" Read more... Justin Fox: "These transcripts, and their release schedule, are as best I can tell unique in American government. They're also very valuable." Read more... DECLASSIFIED Eli Lake: "Two weeks before David Petraeus resigned as CIA director on November 9, 2012, his fate was already sealed with the FBI. In an interview at his CIA office two weeks earlier, the retired four-star general lied to its investigators." Read more... EUROPE Leonid Bershidsky: "The most striking thing about Estonia's e-government system isn't the way it allows anyone to file taxes, vote or receive a medical prescription, all in a matter of minutes and from a single website. The technology behind it is smart, but not magical. The real surprise is that more countries have yet to build similar systems of their own." Read more...