Congressman Paul Ryan and other influential Republicans sketched out plans Tuesday for how they’d deal with a Supreme Court ruling that cancels Obamacare’s subsidies in many of the states, saying they could use such a decision to create a “bridge” to end the health law for good.
The GOP plan, while still a work in progress, would offer financial assistance to people affected by the ruling to keep buying insurance, but would also give states who never created their own health exchanges the right to opt out of the law’s mandates on individuals and employers.
It also would let people purchase insurance across state lines and crack down on “frivolous lawsuits” through medical-liability reform.
Their pitch, which Democrats rejected immediately, arrived on the eve the health law’s third showdown before the justices on Wednesday. This time, the court will decide whether four key words in the Affordable Care Act limit its ability to pay part of insurance premiums for customers in most states.
The challengers in the case, known as King v. Burwell, say the Affordable Care Act only allows subsidies to be paid in states that set up their own exchanges, not in the states that refused and instead rely on the federal HealthCare.gov portal.
Obama officials, though, interpreted the law to allow subsidies to be paid no matter what.
SEE ALSO: Obama administration prepares for court showdown over Obamacare subsidies
“The Supreme Court should tell the IRS to enforce the law as written — not as the administration wishes it had been written,” the GOP chairman wrote in their op-ed.
If the court rules against the administration, customers in three dozen states would lose access to subsidies, making insurance unaffordable for most of them. That would create a crisis in the law, and the GOP says that would be the time to make major changes in Obamacare.
The GOP sees the ruling, due by June, as offering a window to dismantle the law.
“Americans should have an off-ramp from Obamacare — a legislative alternative that leads them away from an expensive health-care wreck and toward a patient-centered system,” Mr. Ryan, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, wrote in the Wall Street Journal with Rep. John Kline, chairman of the House Education and the Workforce Committee, and Rep. Fred Upton, chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee.
Matthew Lawrence, an academic fellow at Harvard Law School who teaches a seminar on Obamacare, said the presence — or lack thereof — of a congressional fix could impact how the justices view the case.
“The more probable a congressional fix, the more compelling the argument in favor of strict adherence to the words of the statute becomes,” Mr. Lawrence said.
SEE ALSO: Ben Sasse outlines off-ramp for Obamacare subsidies case
The Obama administration says it has no Plan B for the “massive damage” that would unfold if the justices invalidate the subsidies.
Democrats predicted victory in the courts anyway, saying Congress never would have set up insurance standards for the whole nation, only to limit the tax credits that help them work to certain states.
A ruling for the “King” plaintiffs would therefore be the “greatest instance of judicial overreach in the modern history of the court,” Sen. Chris Murphy, Connecticut Democrat, said.
Still, Democrats said even if the court does strike down the subsidies, they won’t work with the GOP.
“This isn’t an off ramp,” Rep. Sander Levin of Michigan, the top Democrat on the Ways and Means Committee, said of Mr. Ryan’s plan. “It would be a dead end for millions of Americans who would see their tax credits disappear.”
• Tom Howell Jr. can be reached at thowell@washingtontimes.com.
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