The administration said Wednesday that congressional Republicans and governors will have to clean up the mess if the Supreme Court rules that the administration has to stop paying Obamacare subsidies in dozens of states, potentially forcing millions of customers to drop coverage.
Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Mathews Burwell, testifying on Capitol Hill, signaled that if the justices rule the law only allows subsidies to be paid in some states, Mr. Obama wants to see a one-sentence fix that expands that definition to the entire country.
And she was cool to GOP suggestions to use an adverse court ruling to unwind the complex health law, saying the focus should be exclusively on paying tax subsidies.
“If the court says that we do not have the authority to give subsidies, the critical decisions will sit with the Congress and states and governors to determine if those subsidies are available,” Mrs. Burwell told the House Committee on Ways and Means.
Ways and Means Chairman Paul Ryan, Wisconsin Republican, pressed for changes, saying that five years in, the law has problems that need to be fixed and questioning whether Mr. Obama would be open to tweaks.
“Is he going to work with Congress to address this situation, or is he going to put concrete around his ankles and say, ’It’s my law or nothing?’” the chairman asked.
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Mrs. Burwell would only say the president will only consider “improvements” to the law that meet certain criteria.
Before this month ends, the court will decide whether subsidies should be restricted to the handful of states that set up their own insurance exchanges, because a phrase in the law calls for subsidies in exchanges “established by the state.”
The administration says the justices should uphold the subsidies — the law allows HHS to stand in for states that refused to set up their own exchanges — and there’s no reason to chart a new path.
“We believe we are implementing the law as it was written,” Mrs. Burwell told lawmakers.
HHS counts 10.2 million paying customers on Obamacare’s exchanges. Mrs. Burwell said the law led to a “historic” decrease in the uninsured rate and made coverage better for those who already had it.
Mr. Ryan sharply disagreed, saying the law clearly restricted the subsidies and that Americans are clamoring for relief from onerous insurance mandates that work in conjunction with the tax credits.
Americans are seeing their premiums go “way up,” he said, and too many people had to pay back excess subsidies to the IRS after they filed their taxes.
“Obamacare is just flat busted,” he said. “It just doesn’t work. And no fix can change that fact.”
More than 6 million Obamacare exchange customers live in states that rely on the federal marketplace, and could lose coverage if they can no longer afford their plans.
Governors in those states — including 26 that are led by Republicans — will face intense pressure to set up their own exchanges in order to keep subsidies flowing. That would further entrench Obamacare, hurting congressional Republicans’ chances to unravel the law.
To avoid that outcome, GOP leaders in the House and Senate are workshopping plans to throw affected Americans a lifeline while using the ruling to move away from Obamacare, citing the administration’s faulty implementation of its own law.
Mrs. Burwell criticized a contingency plan by Sen. Ron Johnson, Wisconsin Republican, that would lock in the subsidies through 2017 while repealing the law’s mandates.
“This bill, in its current form, is [a] repeal, and the president has said that he will not sign something that repeals the act,” Mrs. Burwell said.
• Tom Howell Jr. can be reached at thowell@washingtontimes.com.
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