Yesterday, the United States Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit vacated the opinion in Halbig v. Burwell and agreed to hear the case en banc. This means that the entire D.C. Circuit (or a large number of its judges) will hear and decide the case instead of just the three judges on the original appellate panel. The issue in Halbig centers on a pr...

Suppose Congress mandated that supermarkets like Wal-Mart must give away groceries to everyone, regardless of their ability to pay. Anyone who wanted to could walk in, demand milk, bread, baked beans and ice cream and then walk out without paying. It would be up to the supermarket to send us a bill and hope we pay it. Needless to say, such a law wo...

In 2012 the Supreme Court ruled that the individual mandate in the Affordable Care Act - Obamacare - was constitutional. This was not surprising: after all, since the 1930s the federal government has mandated that Americans buy retirement benefits through Social Security. Now there is another legal challenge to the ACA on its way through the court ...