Intent

One of the more critical parts of Obamacare is the state exchange agency. The program said that states must set up exchanges in order to receive federal subsidies for low income recipients. This was designed to encourage all states to participate and set up exchanges. Much to the surprise of the government 36 states declined to set up state exchanges. These states realized that the federal subsidies would stop in 2015 and the state would be responsible for the cost but would have no say in how the program was run. This would be the end of Obamacare so it went to the Supreme Court where Justice Roberts said that the plan did say that only states with exchanges would receive subsidies but that was not the intent. He said the plan fully intended to subsidies low income people in all states regardless of whether they had state run agencies or not. In other words what was written in the plan was overridden by what was intended. CNSNews.com first published this article on Jan. 5, 2015. Today, the Supreme Court ruled in King v. Burwell that the federal government could pay subsidies to people who did not buy their health insurance in an exchange set up by their state. In the Clinton email investigation FBI Directly Comey said that Mrs. Clinton was exceedingly careless but there was no intent to do anything illegal. In both of these cases the word “intent” was the determining factor. In the Obamacare case it involved what was intended and in the Clinton case what was not intended. In both decision the purpose was to allow the public to determine the outcome instead of some bureaucrat or some court and I have always felt that in cases that do not involve constitutional issues the public can better decide.