As the country — and Washington — anxiously await the Supreme Court’s ruling on the legality of Obamacare subsidies, Republicans are huddling about contingency plans.
Politico reports that while the GOP leadership weighs the fast-track budget procedure known as reconciliation to extend subsidies if the high court strikes them down — a decision that could impact between 6 million and 8 million Americans in at least 34 states — the party is also strategizing about how to scrap the law in its entirety.
But news from the Congressional Budget Office last week has thrown a wrench into the plans.
A CBO cost estimate concluded that the price tag for repealing the president’s signature healthcare law would add $353 billion to the deficit over the next decade, Politico reports.
"That price tag jeopardizes the GOP plan to use the expedited legislative process for a full repeal because any bill that uses the fast-track procedure, such as subsidy extensions followed by a fuller repeal, must reduce — not increase — the deficit," according to the news website.
The GOP is considering a temporary patch in the event the court rules that federal subsidies are illegal, while also reminding Americans that President Barack Obama is the impetus for the disastrous fallout of his legislation, according to Politico.
"While Republicans did not create this mess, we are ready, we are willing, and we are able to do our best to protect the American people from any more harm caused by the president’s flawed law," said Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn.
"(The GOP plan) will empower the states to opt out of Obamacare, allowing them the flexibility to more effectively lower costs and increase choices … [and] promote market-based options without the threat of harmful, onerous, expensive mandates," Cornyn said.
The discussions among Republicans, according to Politico, include whether to repeal, via reconciliation, everything budget rules permit or whether to keep some of the act's Medicaid expansion, and Medicare savings and taxes, once the "bridge period" is over.
"They could still repeal major elements of the ACA and offset with other provisions to meet the net figure, but for the love of me I don’t know what those offsets would be unless it were tax increases, which obviously would not be considered," GOP budget expert Bill Hoagland told Politico.
An article authored by the Center for American Progress, published in
Newsweek, contends that nixing the tax credits from people who live in states that rely on the federal insurance marketplace would result in "substantial disruption to the U.S. health care system," and cause 8 million Americans to lose their coverage while premiums would skyrocket for countless others.
"This court decision has the potential to upend the health care system at the same time that the Affordable Care Act is working," the piece states. "Across the country, 16.4 million people have gained quality, affordable coverage as of May 2015."
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