Republicans have spent the final days before the latest Obamacare challenge insisting they want to maintain health insurance subsides should the Supreme Court strike them down.
Leading GOP lawmakers — who support the King v. Burwell challenge the court is set to hear Wednesday — have placed op-eds calling for continued federal assistance for low and middle-income Americans if they lose their subsidies provided under the Affordable Care Act.
Reps. Paul Ryan, Fred Upton and John Kline wrote in the Wall Street Journal that people should receive tax credits to buy coverage. In the Washington Post, Sens. Orrin Hatch, Lamar Alexander and John Barrasso said they’d provide financial assistance for those already getting subsidies.
The lawmakers say their version of insurance subsidies would help people more than the ones offered under the Affordable Care Act. “Under Obamacare, government controls your choices. Under our proposal, you will,” Ryan, Upton and Kline wrote.
A major part of President Obama’s healthcare law is at stake in the King case, where plaintiffs argue that federal insurance subsidies can be awarded legally only in states running their own marketplaces instead of relying on healthcare.gov. The justices are expected to hand down a decision in June.
The backup plans being touted by Republicans may reflect concerns that they could be blamed for poor Americans losing their insurance if the Supreme Court blocks the health law’s subsidies in most of the states. And now that they’ve hammered the Obama administration for not having a backup plan, they could look hypocritical for not proposing a Plan B of their own.
But the only Republican to release a detailed plan so far is freshman Sen. Ben Sasse of Nebraska, who wants to adapt “Cobra” — the law providing coverage to workers who have lost or changed jobs — to allow Obamacare subsidy recipients to keep collecting assistance temporarily.
The other proposals don’t go into much detail about how those subsidies would work or how long they would last.
In a Fox News interview Tuesday, Ryan called the Obamacare tax credits “thinly veiled subsidies policed by the Internal Revenue Service,” but replied simply “not at all” when asked how they differ from the credits he’s proposing.
And the GOP proposals were rapidly dismissed by Democrats on Tuesday, who said they didn’t believe Republicans would coalesce around one plan.
“This Republican Congress can’t even keep the Department of Homeland Security operating for a week at a time,” said Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn.
“None of these op-eds make a serious attempt to explain how they would remove the tax hike on middle class families or restore consumer protections that prohibit insurance companies from discriminating,” said Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y.
The Republican proposals got criticized by some within the GOP’s own ranks. Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, a potential 2016 presidential contender, blasted Republicans to trying to save the subsidies.
“Americans would pay billions more in higher taxes to fund the newly-restored subsidies, making Obamacare that much more entrenched,” Jindal wrote in National Review. “What self-proclaimed conservative of sound mind would do such a thing?”
