President Trump’s fiscal year 2021 budget proposal doesn’t call for a specific backup plan to replace Obamacare in case the lawsuit his administration supports to throw out the healthcare law were to be successful.
The budget request, released Monday, instead creates a place holder allowance for the “president’s health reform vision” of almost $600 billion to spend from 2021 to 2030. The document stands in contrast to the two previous years when Trump endorsed a Republican bill, which became commonly known as “Graham-Cassidy,” to turn federal funding over to states so each one could choose how to operate its healthcare system.
Trump also didn’t call on Congress to repeal Obamacare during his State of the Union address last week. Democrats in Congress have repeatedly been drawing attention to the Trump administration’s attacks on Obamacare, as they believe it will help them electorally headed into the presidential election.
During Trump’s first budget, put out shortly after he came into office, the president called on Congress to “repeal Obamacare and its burdensome regulations and mandates, and replace it with a framework that restores choice and competition.” But the latest document avoids using the term “repeal Obamacare.” Instead, it notes that U.S. patients pay high prices for care and invokes overarching language about the president’s vision for healthcare, saying it “will ensure better care at lower costs.”
“Americans deserve affordable, personalized care that puts them in control and provides peace of mind,” the document says. “The president’s healthcare reforms will protect the most vulnerable, especially those with pre-existing conditions, and provide the affordability, choice, and control Americans want, and the high-quality care that all Americans deserve.”
Congressional Republicans failed in 2017 to repeal Obamacare. The Trump administration has sided with a lawsuit, filed by GOP officials, that threatens to throw out the entire law. Though Trump has told reporters multiple times that his administration would come up with a backup plan, his office has yet to release any details.
The lawsuit, which looms behind the administration, Texas v. Azar was filed by Republican state officials who say Obamacare must be struck down on the grounds that it lost a critical component when the 2017 GOP tax overhaul zeroed out its fine on the uninsured. Republicans said the fine had been central to Obamacare and that the rest of its provisions would not work and should not stand without it.
On Feb. 21, the Supreme Court will meet to discuss whether it will hear the case, which was sent back from the appeals courts to the lower courts. It’s possible that the justices will take up the case and make a decision about the future of the law ahead of the 2020 elections, reviving the issue just ahead of Election Day.
Should all of the law be thrown out, it would cause widespread changes to the healthcare system, including by gutting its politically popular rules that prevent insurers from turning sick people away or charging them more than healthy people.
