Top Insurer Wants ‘Grand Bargain’ If SCOTUS Blows Up Obamacare

President Barack Obama, center, meets with Speaker of the House John Boehner, left, and Senate Majority leader Mitch McConnell, right, during a meeting with the Congressional leadership in the Cabinet Room of the Whi... President Barack Obama, center, meets with Speaker of the House John Boehner, left, and Senate Majority leader Mitch McConnell, right, during a meeting with the Congressional leadership in the Cabinet Room of the White House in Washington, D.C. on January 13, 2015. Photo Credit: Kristoffer Tripplaar/ Sipa USA *** Please Use Credit from Credit Field *** MORE LESS
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With the Supreme Court threatening to gut Obamacare, a top insurance executive says that he is working on a “grand bargain” between the White House and Congress in case that worst-case scenario comes to be.

Reuters reported Thursday on the comments that Aetna CEO Mark Bertolini, who has been a frequent critic of the law, made to a small group of investors. He described his ambitions as a “grand bargain” if the Court rules that tax subsidies offered in the 30-plus states using HealthCare.gov are invalid.

“Blowing up the (Affordable Care Act) is like shutting down the government,” Bertolini said. “So we are having conversations on both sides of the aisle about what … things you change in the ACA, what we could introduce, about how to make a grand bargain should the Supreme Court decide.”

As TPM reported Thursday, House Republicans met behind closed doors Thursday to discuss their options if the high court blows up the health reform law. Health coverage for up to 9 million people would be at risk, according to independent estimates. A ruling is expected this summer.

“We’re obviously doing contingency planning for King v. Burwell,” House Ways and Means Committee Chair Paul Ryan (R-WI) told reporters after the meeting. “It would be wrong not to. … That’s something that is an ongoing conversation and we’re doing all of our diligence on that.”

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  1. This is all so damned bloody ridiculous. Congress could fix all this in a matter of minutes with simple votes for a “technical fix” to make it plain that subsidies were intended for people in all fifty states, whether said states did or did not set up their own exchanges. Those could even be voice votes so constituents wouldn’t know how their representative or senators voted.

    But Republicans have precluded this fix, so now they have to come up with something that maybe cons millions of Americans to believe that, yes, the GOP cares whether or not they can afford health care.

    That we have this mess now is one of the most appalling things I’ve witnessed in several decades of closely watching politics in America. (That we have a Supreme Court that will probably knock out the ACA is also way up there on the appalling scale.)

  2. Every other country in the world can manage a nation’s healthcare, but we can’t? What a terrible shame this is.

  3. Like my mother always said, " Be careful what you wish for…you just might get it."

  4. This was obviously coming and the whole point of the whining: The GOP’s handlers want to be rid of the med device tax, 80/20, employer mandate, and other consumer-friendly irritants. The complaint is silly, but they’ve worked the system to get to leverage a few easily changed words into getting big changes.

  5. “It would be wrong not to. … That’s something that is an ongoing conversation and we’re doing all of our diligence on that.”

    Dude caught himself in the middle of admitting that it would be wrong not to fix it and thereby screw millions of people. They can’t even admit that publicly because it highlights that right there is all the reason needed for them change one or two words in the fucking statute to undo these ridiculous semantic games.

    NO. FUCKING. BARGAIN.

    I will be more irrationally outraged than you’ve ever seen me if Obama doesn’t hold their tiny cocks to the fire on this.

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