Peter Suderman:
Obamacare is headed to the Supreme Court again this year in the case of King v. Burwell, which challenges the Obama administration’s decision to allow insurance subsidies inside federal exchanges. One of the key differences between the way that Republicans and Democrats are preparing for the case is that Republicans are thinking about what comes next if the challengers win.
In an appearance before the Senate Finance Committee yesterday, The Hill reports, Sylvia Matthews Burwell, who runs the Department of Health and Human Services, refused to specify what, if any, contingency plans the administration was making for the possibility that it might lose in court. If the High Court sides with the challengers, the ruling would invalidate insurance subsidies in the 36 states where the federal government operates an exchange under Obamacare.
The administration and its allies have emphasized the disruption such a ruling would cause, but not how they would respond. Burwell refused to address that question again yesterday morning, saying only that “my focus is on completing and implementing the law, which we believe is the law.” Her question-dodging was aggressive enough that Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) suggested that she was “contemptuous of Congress’s responsibilities,” according to The Hill.
It’s clear enough what the point of all this is; the administration wants the Court to believe that it would be maximally painful to side with the challengers. Any hint of a contingency plan would soften the blow.
Which is why, in contrast, multiple groups of Republicans in Congress are now working on drawing up health care alternatives should the Supreme Court rule in favor of the challengers.
The first of those, a joint plan from GOP Sens. Burr, Hatch, and Upton, was announced late last night. The proposal, dubbed the Patient Choice, Affordability, Responsibility, and Empowerment Act, is an update of the Burr-Hatch-Coburn plan released last year. It’s an Obamacare replacement plan that starts by wiping the Affordable Care Act from the books entirely, ditching its individual mandate and many of its restrictions and regulations.
In its place, the plan would implement a system of tax credits to help low-income individuals purchase coverage, prohibit lifetime limits on insurance plans, adopt looser age-rating restrictions than Obamacare, and seek to protect some individuals with preexisting conditions through a continuous coverage guarantee for individuals shifting between plans in different insurance markets.
It would also begin to limit the preferential tax treatment of employer-sponsored insurance by requiring workers to pay federal income tax, at whatever their rate already is, on health benefits valued at more than $12,000 for an individual or $30,000 for a family.
I suspect there will be plenty of surprises when people prepare their taxes the next few months: people who thought they had insurance really didn’t have insurance, whether those enrolled with a concierge practice are considered to be covered or not, those who do qualify for an exemption won’t be granted exemption, etc. The IRS and the administration will be more inclined to assess a penalty because it’s in their interest to do so.
Seems like Republicans now love the very ideas they’ve been claiming to hate.
Maybe republicans should be worrying about how they will respond, if they finally manage to wreck Obamacare and throw the health insurance and healthcare industries into total chaos with national elections quickly coming up. They really might be every bit as stupid as they seem to be.
For YEARS Dems acted paralyzed into not making decisions or creating and passing budgets because of ”election season.”
Those days are over.
It is nearly two full years away from the next election (OK, make that 20 months) plenty of time to do some of the work of government.
@Nanny: “plenty of time to do some of the work of government. ”
Truly funny on several fronts. On what planet do you see this happening?
If it doesn’t happen, 2 years isn’t long enough. If it does happens, one can only imagine the teabag head explosions.
@Greg: But whose fault would it be that it was written so badly?
It has become a pattern of behavior for this administration to drag things out they don’t want to do…..no matter who is hurt because of their dithering.
I’m not really surprised Obama is pulling this particular trick out of his bag.
Today he actually is trying to rehabilitate his foreign policy by re-defining dithering as “strategic patience.”
LOL!
@drjohn: Democrats didn’t read it and that will be their defense as America sends them walking as in the last election cycle. Wait until they try and fully implement this turd!!
@drjohn:
Let me make a wild guess and say, uh, Obama? Because he like, uh, didn’t write it but rather simply signed it?
@Ronald J. Ward: He didn’t read it either. The president can only delegate authority, not responsibility. He signed it, he bought it!