Health insurance subsidies for all

By Cesar Lumba, Las Vegas

Friday, Feb. 27, 2015 | 2 a.m.

I commend the Sun for the debate on the Affordable Care Act’s health insurance subsidies (pro/con, Feb. 17).

At first glance it appears that Americans who live in states that do not have their own state-run exchanges are not entitled to premium subsidies provided by the federal government.

To those celebrating the inevitable gutting of the Affordable Care Act, allow me to bring up the Second Amendment: “A well-regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.” A literal reading of the Second Amendment says only those who belong to militias have the right to own and carry firearms. But justices looked at the context and interpreted that the right exists even for those who are not members of a militia.

It would be absurd to say that only those Americans who live in states where there are state-run exchanges have the right to premium subsidies. That is discriminatory, and the federal government cannot be presumed to practice discrimination. And so the language glitch in the ACA must be ignored and the Supreme Court must find that premium subsidies are available to all Americans who qualify by hardship.

Context and legislative intent are the key. Justice John Roberts, who already has ruled in favor of Obamacare, used context in concluding that the individual mandate penalty is a tax, even though its proponents have insisted it is not. The individual mandate is therefore constitutional, according to Roberts, because Congress has the right to impose taxes.