Obama’s top health official is expected to warn Congress that repealing Obamacare without a replacement will wreak havoc on state finances and force some smaller hospitals to close.
Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Burwell will deliver remarks on Monday at the National Press Club. Excerpts from her remarks continue the escalating rhetoric from Obama administration officials urging the GOP-controlled Congress to reconsider any attempts to repeal Obamacare without a replacement ready.
Burwell will discuss not just the impact of repealing the law without a replacement on insurance markets but also on states.
“Governors of both parties have said that repeal and delay would create unacceptable uncertainty for their state budgets, and their states’ economies,” according to an excerpt of Burwell’s remarks.
She added that some rural or community hospitals will “have to shrink or even shut down if they can’t count on funding through Medicaid,” which was expanded under the law.
The address, Burwell’s last as HHS secretary, will also touch on the problems threatening the individual insurance market, which is for people who don’t get coverage through their jobs. The market includes Obamacare’s exchanges and many of the regulations on insurers such as mandated essential benefits in plans.
“If the Affordable Care Act is repealed without a replacement, the damage to the country’s individual insurance market will begin this spring,” the excerpts say. “If health insurance companies don’t know what the market will look like going forward, many will either raise prices or drop out.”
Republicans have responded to Democratic attacks by noting that individual markets are already collapsing with some major insurers defecting and those that remain raising prices by up to 50 to 70 percent in some areas.
This law is hurting people right now,” said Speaker Paul Ryan during a press conference Friday. “We have to step in front of this chaos and provide relief for people.”
Republicans will vote later this week in the Senate on a budget resolution that kick starts the Obamacare repeal process. The resolution sets spending levels for the next decade and calls on House and Senate committees to draft repeal legislation that will use the reconciliation pathway.
Reconciliation is a procedural move that enables a piece of legislation to be approved in the Senate via a simple majority, rather than the 60 votes needed to break a filibuster. A bill that uses reconciliation must address budget and spending levels, hence the need for the budget resolution.
The GOP may leave Obamacare intact for a few years while a replacement is crafted.
Several GOP senators have voiced concern about repealing the law without a replacement.
