This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Monday, July 21st, 2014.

I'm Caleb Brown. A Federal Circuit Court could rule any day now in the case of Halbig v Burwell, if successful would free a quarter million employers

and their 57 million employees from Obamacare mandates. Michael Cannon is

director of health policy studies at the Cato Institute.

He discusses the implications.

We're expecting the DC Circuit to issue a ruling in Halbig v Burwell any day now.

Halbig is one of four cases that's challenging the Obama

administration's decision to offer subsidies through federally

established health insurance exchanges. Even though the statute says that the Patient Protection

Affordable Care Act or Obamacare says that those subsidies are available only through

an exchange established by the state. The plaintiffs in Halbig are claiming

that because the Obama administration is issuing those subsidies unlawfully in the 36 states

with federal exchanges.

Those subsidies are triggering penalties against them,

so they're being injured by that illegal activity.

And they're asking the courts to put an end to that illegal activity.

Now supporters of the Obama administration's decision,

we can't really call them supporters of the PPACA because they're not

supporting it in this case, they're not supporting the clear language of this statute.

They are beginning to predict dire consequences if the courts rule in favor of the Halbic plaintiffs.

It's a little reminiscent of what supporters of the law did leading up to the Supreme Court's decision in N. F. B. Sebelius, the case involving the individual

mandate, they were able to, or there's a lot of speculation that they were able to intimidate Supreme Court Justice John Roberts

...