Within hours of Thursday's Supreme Court decision to uphold Obamacare subsidies, one House Republican proposed a law that would force the high court justices and their staff to enroll in the president's health care system so they can "see firsthand what the American people" have to live with.
"As the Supreme Court continues to ignore the letter of the law, it's important that these six individuals understand the full impact of their decisions on the American people," Rep. Brian Babin, R-Texas, said Thursday.
"That's why I introduced the SCOTUScare Act to require the Supreme Court and all of its employees to sign up for Obamacare."
The legislation proposed by Babin would only let the federal government provide health care to the court through the Affordable Care Act's national exchange, reported The Hill.
"By eliminating their exemption from Obamacare, they will see firsthand what the American people are forced to live with," he said.
The crux of the Supreme Court decision in King v. Burwell centered around how to interpret five words found in the health care law: "exchange established by the State."
Challengers of the law contended that the plain language of the law means that the federal government can only provide subsidies to people buying insurance on "an exchange established by the State."
President Obama and the law's architects, however, countered that subsidies were always intended to be provided to all Americans, regardless of if their state had established an exchange.
Much to the dismay of legal scholars, the Supreme Court agreed in a 6-3 decision, though it noted that the wording was "ambiguous."
"The argument that the phrase 'established by the State' would be superfluous if Congress meant to extend tax credits to both State and Federal Exchanges is unpersuasive," Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in the majority opinion. "Congress passed the Affordable Care Act to improve health insurance markets, not to destroy them. If at all possible, we must interpret the Act in a way that is consistent with the former, and avoids the latter. Section 36B can fairly be read consistent with what we see as Congress's plan, and that is the reading we adopt."
In his dissenting opinion, Justice Antonin Scalia explained the absurdity of that interpretation: "The Court holds that when the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act says 'Exchange established by the State' it means 'Exchange established by the State or the Federal Government.' That is of course quite absurd."
"Faced with overwhelming confirmation that 'Exchange established by the State' means what it looks like it means, the Court comes up with argument after feeble argument to support its contrary interpretation," he continued. "None of its tries comes close to establishing the implausible conclusion that Congress used 'by the State' to mean 'by the State or not by the State.'"
Former New Jersey Superior Court Judge Andrew Napolitano told Fox News that the Supreme Court wanted to save Obamacare for political reasons and managed to somehow find "a way to get there."
"What [Roberts] did was to suggest that plain, ordinary English words, which are not ambiguous in their meaning, somehow to the six of the justices in the majority are ambiguous and therefore they can interpret them however they want," Napolitano said.
