The deliberate creation of a separate section to authorize a separate federal entity is not a drafting error. The repeated and deliberate reference to one section but not another is not a drafting error. The refusal to grant equal authority to two programs authorized by two separate sections is not a drafting error. The decision to specifically reference section X but not section Y in a portion of a law that grants spending or tax authority is not a drafting error.

The clear text of the law repeatedly demonstrates that plans purchased via federal exchanges were never meant to be treated the same as plans purchased by state-based exchanges. Despite its assertions, the IRS was never granted the statutory authority to hand out tax credits related to plans purchased via a federal health exchange.

All of that of course begs the question: if the law’s authors originally intended to constrain subsidies to state plans, what was the rationale for the IRS about-face in 2011? That’s actually an easy one to answer: the administration never imagined that so many states would refuse to establish Obamacare exchanges. The subsidies for state exchange plans were meant to be pot sweeteners — incentives for states to set up their own exchanges. If fines for mandate non-compliance were Obamacare’s stick, the subsidies for state exchange health plans were the carrot. To the law’s backers, that plan made sense: the White House didn’t really want to have to manage 51 separate exchanges. They wanted the states to do all the heavy lifting. Unfortunately, several dozen legislatures and governors had different plans.