Professor Gamage and I have been blogging on the law and legislative history of the Halbig Obamacare case, but the political economy is interesting too. Our governor in Indiana is Governor Pence, a conservative former U.S. Representative with a lot of talent and ambition (and a legislature controlled by his party). One of my law-and-econ colleagues said, “My guess is that Governor Pence’s refusal to set up an exchange will last only as long as his presidential ambitions.”
If Indiana residents can’t get Obamacare subsidies because there’s no state exchange, as Halbig says, then there are going to be some angry voters here! But some people will be happy too, because if people in Indiana don’t get the subsidies, Hoosiers don’t have to comply with the individual or employers mandates to buy health insurance. So how does the political calculus work out?