GOP’s George Costanza moment: The “Moops” doctrine and the war on Obamacare
Republicans gloat over an Obamacare court case that poached its legal reasoning from "Seinfeld." No joke VIDEO
Topics: Affordable Care Act, Editor's Picks, George Costanza, Halbig, halbig v. sebelius, Health care reform, John Boehner, judicial activism, Obamacare, Obamacare exchanges, Republicans, Seinfeld, Ted Cruz, U.S. Circuit Court of Appels, Video, Politics News
The D.C. Circuit Court’s decision in Halbig v. Burwell came down yesterday, and in an anticipated but no less galling turn of events, a pair of Republican-appointed judges ruled that a single poorly worded snippet of the Affordable Care Act invalidates subsidies for people who purchased health coverage through the federal exchanges. Those exchanges were set up for the 36 states that declined to build their own exchanges, so the practical effect of the ruling would be to make health insurance more expensive for roughly 4.6 million people spread out across some of the country’s poorest states.
Supporters of the Affordable Care Act point out that, the sloppily written language notwithstanding, the full text of the law clearly indicates that its drafters intended for the government to subsidize health plans purchased through the federal exchanges. These two judges, however, argued that a narrow reading of one out-of-context sliver of the bill trumps all, and ruled in favor of eviscerating the ACA and causing massive chaos in the insurance market. It’s the sort of thing that conservatives used to denounce as “judicial activism.” (A separate ruling yesterday from the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the legality of the subsidies.)
I’ve been trying to figure out how to best characterize and/or mock the legal reasoning at play behind the Halbig decision, and I think it can be boiled down to one word: Moops.
I’m referring, of course, to George Costanza’s famous game of Trivial Pursuit against the Bubble Boy, in which Costanza tries to cheat his way out of losing by taking advantage of a misprint on the answer card: “Moops” instead of “Moors.”
“That’s not ‘Moops,’ you jerk. It’s Moors. It’s a misprint,” the Bubble Boy explains, accurately presenting the game manufacturer’s intent in spite of the minor technical error.
“I’m sorry, the card says ‘Moops,’” Costanza replies, adopting an absurdly narrow and nonsensical interpretation of the rules that furthers his own interests. It’s a pretty good match on the logic, and the happy coincidence that the situation pits a whiny, lying jerk against a person in need of substantial medical care only bolsters its relevance.
And that gets to the larger point: Conservatives and Republicans are celebrating the fact that two judges indulged in some tortured legal logic in order to deny millions of people the subsidies that make their health plans affordable. The plaintiffs’ case in Halbig is a transparent attempt to sabotage the Affordable Care Act, and the people cheering on that sabotage are signaling that they’re fine with a whole lot of collateral damage just so long as Obamacare takes a hit too.
