Suddenly the GOP owns Obamacare.
Via UB Com
The Supreme Court is taking another look at President Barack Obama’s health care law, and this time it’s not just the White House that should be worried.
Republican lawmakers and governors, too, will feel the backlash if the court invalidates insurance subsidies worth billions of dollars to people in more than 30 states.
Obama’s law offers subsidized private insurance to people who don’t have access to it on the job. Without financial assistance with their premiums, millions of those consumers would drop coverage.
Disruptions in the affected states wouldn’t end there. If droves of healthy people bail out of HealthCare.gov, residents buying individual policies outside the government market could be next. Self-pay customers would face a jump in premiums because they’re in the same insurance pool as the subsidized ones.
Health insurers spent millions to defeat the law as it was being debated. But the industry told the court last month the subsidies are a key to making the overhaul work. Withdrawing them would “make the situation worse than it was before” Congress passed the Affordable Care Act.
The debate over “Obamacare” was messy enough when just politics and ideology were involved. It gets really dicey with millions of people in the balance.[…]
If the Supreme Court rules in late June, that would leave about three months until the start of the next sign-up season for coverage.
If the ruling goes against the subsidies, it’s unclear whether the courts can delay the effects for more than a few weeks, and most state legislatures are not in session during the summer.
There’s speculation the White House could quickly roll out an administrative fix, but Obama could also toss the whole mess into the lap of Congress.
Technically, a tweak from Congress could fix the problem. But after repeated votes to repeal “Obamacare,” would any Republicans facilitate its rescue?
“We don’t see fixes the administration can make, and we don’t see Congress acting to fix this,” said Neera Tanden, president of the Center for American Progress, a public-policy center aligned with the White House.