"From the time that the Supreme Court agreed in November to hear the challenge to subsidies on the thirty-four insurance exchanges set up by the federal government instead of by the states, the Obama administration and its supporters have talked darkly about the collapse of the entire ACA if that challenge succeeded.... The uncertain thing, as the hearing approached, was whether that message would get through to the nine members of the Court who would be the deciders. If there was one dominant theme at the actual hearing, aside from how to read a complex federal statute, it was that a victory for the challengers would come at perhaps a serious loss -- perhaps a constitutional loss, but at least a human and social loss in the end of the most ambitious (and audacious) health care plan ever enacted in America." [King v. Burwell, No. 14-1158 (4th Cir. July 22, 2014; cert. pet. granted Nov. 7, 2014, argued Mar. 4, 2015)]  MORE >>