A top official at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce said Thursday that the fight against Obamacare is largely over and that critics’ energies were better spent fixing specific problems caused by the landmark healthcare legislation.
“There is a growing realization that repeal won’t happen,” Randy Johnson, the chamber’s senior vice president of labor, immigration and employee benefits, told reporters during a Thursday press conference. “Some of the Republican proposals [relating to Obamacare] reflect this.”
The nation’s biggest business lobby was a staunch opponent of the legislation that created the Affordable Care Act in 2010. Johnson said the Chamber hadn’t changed its opinion of the bill but did not see a viable path toward repeal. Instead, he said the most fruitful path involved legislation offering “targeted” changes to specific parts of the law.
“There is no unscrambling the omelette,” Johnson said.
The comment is bound to anger many conservatives who have made repealing the law a cause even though it has long been clear that President Obama would not undo his signature policy initiative and there is no veto-proof majority in the Senate to override him.
Johnson made the comments in response to a reporter’s question about whether he thought Congress would repeal the healthcare law’s “Cadillac tax” on high-premium insurance.
The tax is intended to offset the cost of Obamcare but has attracted criticism from both the Left and the Right. Union groups, many of which negotiated generous healthcare plans for their members, fear the law will cause businesses to drop coverage altogether rather than pay the tax.
Johnson said he believed proposals to repeal that tax were building momentum in Congress and that similar changes to the law would gain ground as well.
