(POLITICO) Harold Pollack — The Supreme Court has finally spoken. It never really needed to speak at all. The Court’s 6-3 decision to uphold federal subsidies under the Affordable Care Act was simple and emphatic, written by Chief Justice Roberts, no less. Justice Antonin Scalia’s dyspeptic dissent indicates the extent of the administration’s legal victory. Stock prices for the Hospital Corporation of America jumped approximately 8 percent with this decision, providing some sense of the economic havoc that might otherwise have ensued.

I’m gratified by the outcome. But I remain saddened by the full history of this case. Cases such as King v. Burwell do not raise fundamental legal or policy challenges. Rather, they are naked invitations to crude judicial activism. Such nihilistic approaches to statutory interpretation might render unworkable complex legislation in the divided institutional turf of American democracy. President Barack Obama was vulnerable to legal/partisan guerilla warfare this time around on ACA. Had the plaintiffs prevailed, the hallmark legislative initiative of some conservative Republican successor would prove equally vulnerable on something else. Shakespeare reminds us: Such instructions, once taught, have a way of returning to plague their inventors.

Source: The Greatest Trolling Exercise in the History of Health Policy Is Over – Harold Pollack – POLITICO Magazine