Is the clock ticking on your health care?

Two federal courts have just issued two opposite rulings on Obamacare. Depending on which one stands, about 7 million working class Americans will either keep or lose their health insurance.

The issue is over a single sentence in the law. Right now, any family of four making up to $95,400 a year gets a tax credit when buying insurance through any health exchange. But as one of Tuesday’s rulings pointed out, the law doesn’t say that. It says tax credits will be available through, “An exchange provided by the states.”

Well, 36 states never set up those exchanges. Now, three judges on the D.C. Court of Appeals ruled 2-1 that individuals in those states that didn’t set up exchanges are not entitled to the tax credit. Which could mean losing their insurance.

For supporters of Obamacare, this an outrage.

But if you look at the map of the states affected by this ruling, the states without their own exchanges – it’s basically the South and most of the Midwest. Areas that deliberately did not set up state exchanges because they detested Obamacare.

They opposed the idea of forcing people to buy health insurance, or providing subsidies to pay for it.

So for them, far from being an outrage, getting rid of the tax credit might just be a dream come true!

In any case, the clock is now ticking in those 36 states, but given the slow pace of the court system, anyone who’s worried should have plenty of time to move to one of the other 14.