Now we’re dealing with the consequences.

Any chance that Democrats had of legitimately  passing their bill died on January 19, 2010 when Massachusetts' own Scott Brown  was elected to the U.S. Senate promising to be the key vote -- number 41 -- to  sustain a filibuster and block the bill.

That day, no lesser a left-wing icon than Rep. Barney  Frank said: “I feel strongly that the Democratic majority in Congress must  respect the process and make no effort to bypass the electoral results.”

That didn’t last long. The union front-group  Families USA – heavily funded by pharmaceutical interests – came forward with  scheme to precisely bypass the electoral results. It involved enacting the  Senate-passed discussion draft from the previous December into law as is, with a  follow-on reconciliation bill to add significant additional tax hikes, make some  tweaks that unions wanted to see, and take over the student loan industry.

Of course, the discussion draft was packed full of  the ordinary mistakes, errors, contradictions, and ambiguities that you would  expect in an unfinished product. Now it’s all been dumped in the hands of  regulators who have astonishing, unprecedented power to interpret what it all  means – often asserting that it means the plain opposite of what it actually  says.

Since then we’ve seen a string of questionable  guidance documents and proposed rulemakings, in a massive expansion of  bureaucratic discretion struggling to make sense of a nonsensical situation, the  result of a discussion draft being passed into law.

For example, right after the bill was passed HHS  Secretary Kathleen  Sebelius sent a letter demanding insurance companies end pre-existing  condition exclusions for children immediately – even though the law didn’t  actually require them to.

Now comes the biggest glitch yet discovered. Perhaps  big enough to collapse the whole edifice.

As Investors Business Daily aka IBD reports today, the massive taxpayer subsidies at the heart  of ObamaCare may not cover nearly as many recipients as was hoped.  Specifically:

“Section 1311 of ObamaCare  instructs state governments to set up an exchange. If a state refuses, Section  1321 lets the federal government establish an exchange in the state.

Yet ObamaCare states that the tax  credit is available to people who are enrolled in an ‘an exchange established by  the state under (Section) 1311.’ It makes no mention of people enrolled in  federal exchanges being eligible for the tax credit.”

Of course, Obama’s IRS can try to ignore the law,  issue another dubious guidance document, and attempt to grant credits to  participants in a federally-run exchange. But that would clearly violate the  letter of the law, and if they try it they should lose in court.

Even before this glitch was discovered, it made sense for states  to refuse to set up exchanges, which are tightly controlled by HHS under  extremely restrictive rules. Now states can strike a body blow to ObamaCare by  refusing to establish exchanges.
This is just one more reason this  discussion-draft-turned-law version of ObamaCare is terminally flawed and must  be repealed.