ON MARCH 4th the Supreme Court will hear arguments in King v Burwell, a case that could gut the Affordable Care Act (ACA), Barack Obama’s signature health-care law. It is the third legal challenge to Obamacare in four years to reach America’s highest court. In 2012 Chief Justice John Roberts surprised almost everyone by siding with the court’s liberal justices to uphold the constitutionality of the “individual mandate”, which requires most Americans to carry a health insurance policy. In 2014 he voted with the conservatives to allow certain businesses a religious exemption from providing some forms of birth control to female employees. This time, the challenge to the ACA is semantic. The case revolves around four words in the mammoth 906-page law that could bring the whole thing down.
