Last Thursday, fifteen states and the District of Columbia moved to intervene in House v. Price, the case about the ACA’s cost-sharing reductions. At the same time, they asked the court to hear the case promptly.
This is a bigger deal than it may seem, and could offer some comfort to insurers that are in desperate need of it. Apologies for the long post, but the law here is complex and uncertain.
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When the House of Representatives sued the Obama administration a few years back, it argued that Congress never appropriated the money to make cost-sharing payments. The district court sided with the House and entered an injunction prohibiting the payments. The court, however, puts its injunction on hold to allow for an appeal.
The Trump administration has now inherited the lawsuit, and the health-care industry is waiting on tenterhooks to see what it will do. For now, the case has been put on hold. But if Trump drops the appeal, which he has threatened to do, the injunction would spring into effect and the cost-sharing payments would cease immediately, destabilizing insurance markets across the country. It’s the nuclear option.
If the states are allowed to intervene, however, they could pursue the appeal even if Trump decides to drop it. With the appeal in place, the injunction couldn’t take effect until the case is heard and decided.
What’s more, the states are very likely to prevail. Not on the merits: as I’ve written before, the House is right that there’s no appropriation to make the cost-sharing payments. But the D.C. Circuit is likely to be skeptical of the district court’s conclusion that the House of Representatives has standing to sue. That’s why the states want to court to decide the case quickly: they hope to get rid of the lawsuit once and for all.
Allowing the states to intervene would not eliminate uncertainty. The D.C. Circuit could always surprise us and affirm the district court’s decision. Premiums for 2018 would still have to rise in response to the risk that payments might stop sometime next year. And even if the House loses, the Trump administration might be tempted to stop making the payments anyhow—although it’s not clear that it has the legal authority to do so without going through the cumbersome process of withdrawing an Obama-era rule.
Still, insurers could breathe a bit easier. If the states are allowed to intervene, Trump couldn’t blow up the individual markets in a fit of pique.
HENRY KOTULA 