Flood of Briefs on the Health Care Law’s Subsidies Hits the Supreme Court

The New York Times reports:

Liberal groups are emphasizing states’ rights, a theme calculated to appeal to conservative Supreme Court justices. The insurance industry, once a foe, has come to the aid of President Obama.

Conservatives are mining legislative history to discern the intent of Democrats who wrote the Affordable Care Act. And those Democrats are firing back, saying they know exactly what their intent was: to provide affordable health insurance to all Americans.

Eliminating subsidies in the federal insurance exchange “would be a disaster,” the American Hospital Association argues. The ranks of the uninsured would grow, it says, and “many more people will get sick, go bankrupt or die.”

Such arguments are set forth in legal briefs flooding into the nation’s highest court ahead of oral arguments March 4 that will challenge the payment of subsidies for health insurance in more than 30 states and could determine the fate of the health care law. The case, King v. Burwell, was once seen as a long-shot attempt by conservatives to gut the law by picking out one pivotal phrase in its hundreds of pages that they say the Obama administration has flagrantly misinterpreted.

Love the "insurance industry, once a foe" ? They were never a foe, they were looking to force consumers to payer higher prices through mandates in the law. This is the essence of ObamaCare.