Stuart M. Gerson, a Member of the Firm in the Litigation and Health Care & Life Sciences practices, in the firm's Washington, DC, and New York offices, was quoted in Health Plan Week, in “Health Plans Ponder Timing Issues Related to Supreme Court’s Direction on Subsidies.”
Following is an excerpt:
As for any direction coming from the March 4 oral arguments, an HPW source who was in the courtroom says anybody guessing how the decision will go will have a tough time. Stuart Gerson, an attorney in the Litigation and Health Care and Life Sciences practices at Epstein Becker Green, says he believes that seven votes are not in any question at all. “Scalia, Alito and Thomas are strict textualists and clearly they will hold against the government. Similarly, the questions and statements of Justices Ginsburg, Kagan, Sotomayer and Breyer suggest they will vote for the government. My view is that there are two votes in play: the chief justice, who was pretty cryptic and he did not have all that much to say, and Justice Kennedy, who said stuff on both sides,” he said.
“Certainly, I would not predict anything, although it would not surprise me if the chief justice and Justice Kennedy go the same way — and that could well be on the government’s side, which means that the subsidies would stay in place and health plans of the world would have much greater certainty and likely lower rates,” Gerson says.