If history didn't have a way of repeating itself, the tawdry battle of King vs. Burwell would by now be an obscure footnote. Instead, that defunct legal challenge to the Affordable Care Act is looking more like a template for the future than an ugly but ultimately meaningless sideshow.
The challengers in King ultimately failed, but their aim was dastardly. Last year, they asked the Supreme Court to adopt a decontextualized and highly misleading interpretation of the ACA, under which the federal government would be prohibited from subsidizing Obamacare exchange–based insurance plans in the majority of states. The federally run markets in these states would have collapsed, and millions of people would have lost their health insurance.
