Vox has an important interview with Michael Cannon, a thorn in the side of ObamaCare and Strongman Barack Obama. Sarah Kliff interviews Michael Cannon of the Cato Institute:
Sarah Kliff: This is something I’m curious to hear your take on. I think there was always the thought that maybe one or two states could screw up and not be ready to open their exchanges in time. Or you might have a state like Texas, where the legislature only meets every other year, and they couldn’t get it authorized in time. Under your reading of what Congress meant to do, was the plan to punish a state that like that by barring subsidies? That’s really hard for me to see, and goes back to my initial point about Congress always expecting all states to have subsidies.You'll want to read the entire interview, twice.
Michael Cannon: States had more than three years to establish exchanges. The strongest evidence we have that Congress expected all states to do so in that timeframe is that Congress provided zero funding for federal exchanges in the law.
It may have been the case that, if this legislation had gone to conference, someone would have objected to the conditional nature of the Senate bill’s Exchange subsidies. That someone would have said, "This would knock out one leg of the three-legged stool! Did you pay attention to those town hall meetings in August? We can't let the Tea Party grab onto this because they'll blow up the whole thing! We have to change that!"
But that didn't happen. When Scott Brown won, Democrats only had one bill they could get through Congress. That’s how this provision became law.
You didn't ask about it. Julie [Rovner, a health policy reporter formerly with NPR and currently with Kaiser Health News] didn't ask about it. That doesn't mean that Congress wasn't meaning to do it. That doesn't mean it's not the law. It just means that there was so much else going on that no one examined this. No one questioned them on it.
