Sen. Max Baucus admits the PPACA conditions tax credits on state compliance
Channel: Michael F. Cannon
Date: 2012-09-21

U.S. Senate Finance Committee chairman Max Baucus (D-MT) was the chief sponsor and lead author of his committee's health care bill, which ultimately became the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, better known as "ObamaCare." Baucus shepherded that bill through the Finance Committee, the negotiations with other senators and Obama administration officials in Majority Leader Harry Reid's (D-NV) office, and the final negotiations with the administration and House leaders. Baucus can reasonably claim to be the man most responsible for the PPACA.

On September 23, 2009 -- exactly six months before the PPACA became law -- Baucus admitted on national television that the availability of PPACA's "premium assistance tax credits" would be conditional on whether states implemented the law. During a mark-up of his bill, Baucus ruled out of order a Republican amendment dealing with medical malpractice on the grounds that med mal lies outside the Finance Committee's jurisdiction. (The Judiciary Committee has jurisdiction over med mal.) Sensing a double-standard, Republican Sen. John Ensign (R-NV) challenged Baucus. If Republicans cannot add a medical malpractice amendment to Baucus' bill because the Finance committee lacks jurisdiction, Ensign asked, then how can Baucus' bill direct states to change their laws regarding health insurance coverage and to establish health insurance "exchanges," when those matters are within the jurisdiction of the HELP Committee and outside the jurisdiction of the Finance Committee? 

Though hardly a model of clarity, Baucus' response is open to no other interpretation than that the Finance/PPACA language makes premium-assistance tax credits conditional on states implementing the law. 

These are the only comments anyone has found in the PPACA's legislative history that bear on the question of whether Congress intended for tax credits to be available in states that decline to establish a health insurance "exchange."