WASHINGTON — Don’t expect Congress to tweak Obamacare in order to protect subsidies for millions of Americans which could be invalidated this year by the Supreme Court.
When asked on Friday at a meeting with reporters, House Ways & Means Chair Paul Ryan (R-WI), a key figure overseeing U.S. health policy, said there was no desire among Republicans to tweak the law to defuse the case.
“No,” Ryan said.
The Republican chairman said his party feels “obligated” to come up with a contingency plan for the King v. Burwell case. He said a ruling against the government, which he and other Republicans are calling for, would “affect real peoples’ lives.”
“The idea is not to make Obamacare work better,” he said, adding that the goal would be to give states more freedom “to get out of Obamacare.”
As TPM reported recently, Republicans are far from any kind of consensus on what to do if the justices rule that federal exchange subsidies are impermissible under the Affordable Care Act.
Ryan also said he’s working with other Republicans on a “full replacement” for Obamacare, something his party continues to struggle with nearly five years after the law was enacted. He wouldn’t offer any details or hints on what that might look like or guarantee that Republicans would rally around an alternative.
“We all have our own opinions about these things,” he said. “Everybody’s got their own ideas.”
Presumably the subsidies will have to be repaid in the states using the Federal exchange. That will make the GOPers real popular.
It will make for real interesting red state election results with thousands of people sick and tens of thousand dead and loved ones grieving over the bodies. All because the republicans don’t like the black guy in the WHITE house.
I wish I could have my picture taken with Paul Ryan. I’ve never seen a walkin’ talkin’ rectum before.
Just in case you still weren’t sure Ryan was a dick, he as now removed all doubt.
Sen. Robert Taft was extremely conservative–well to the right of Eisenhower, with whom he contested the Republican nomination in 1952. But he sponsored legislation for public housing, because he came to understand the terrible conditions in which people were living. He was a lot more humane than today’s Republicans, who are willing to sacrifice the well-being of millions in order to advance their twisted ideology.