Before a receptive audience, President Obama’s top health official said Thursday she looks forward to a debate “on the substance, not the politics,” of health reform if the Supreme Court sides with the administration this month in a ruling that could make or break Obamacare in dozens of states.
Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Mathews Burwell told Congress this week it will fall on GOP leaders and governors to clean up the mess if the justices side with challengers who say the government cannot disburse subsidies for Obamacare customers who use the federal HealthCare.gov website.
Without the subsidies, more than 6 million Americans could drop coverage.
Yet if the administration wins, “I think it is the time to move on,” Mrs. Burwell said.
“We need to shift the conversation to, ’This is about affordability, quality and access [to health care].’ … Get the conversation focused on the substance, not the politics,” she told a conference hosted by Enroll America, a nonprofit White House ally that drives customers into the Obamacare marketplace.
Mrs. Burwell said her focus will be on Obamacare’s third round of signups this fall and convincing more states to expand Medicaid under the law. To date, 21 states have refused to augment the federal-state health program for the poor.
She also announced a new initiative, “Healthy Self,” aimed at improving Americans’ health care literacy.
“Let’s face it, understanding our benefits can be confusing for anyone, especially those who have coverage for the first time in their lives,” she said. “Many people still don’t know that these protections and preventive services are now guaranteed by the Affordable Care Act.”
Her comments extended a public push by Mr. Obama and his administration to tout the health overhaul days before the Supreme Court rules.
The justices 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 court should uphold the subsidies — the law allows HHS to stands in the shoes of states that refused to set up their own exchanges — and there’s no reason to chart a new path.
Republicans leaders in the House and Senate disagree, and have cheered on the case known as King v. Burwell. They’re 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.
“We’ll bring that out after the Supreme Court makes a ruling, and it does protect those people who have felt that they were following the law — even though the president wasn’t actually following the law,” Sen. John Barrasso, Wyoming Republican, said earlier this week.
As it stands, Obamacare has 10.2 million paying customers nationwide. About 7.3 million were from 34 states that rely on the federal exchange, and 6.4 million of those customers relied on tax credits. It is that last set of customers who could be affected by the court’s ruling.
Peter V. Lee, executive director of California’s health exchange, said countries around the world have decided that health coverage is a right. And in 1965, the U.S. extended government-sponsored Medicare to people 65 and older.
“There is a moral precedent,” he said, “which is why I’m very confident the Supreme Court will stand on the right side of history.”
• Tom Howell Jr. can be reached at thowell@washingtontimes.com.
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