Posted on 05/12/2015 11:09:45 AM PDT by Jim Robinson
With less than one month to go until the Supreme Court issues a ruling in King v. Burwell -- the case that could dismantle Obamacare -- some states are preparing contingency plans to avert a disaster if the court strikes down access to federally subsidized health care for their residents.
If the Court rules against the administration and says that language in the Affordable Care Act only provides subsidies to people enrolled in coverage in states that set up their own marketplaces, some 7.5 million people in the 34 states relying on the federal exchange would lose their subsidized coverage - unless Congress or state legislatures step in.
Related: Some States Are in Debt Over Obamacare Exchanges
Though some lawmakers on Capitol Hill have floated plans to keep the subsidies flowing through the federal exchange, those plans all include provisions to shift away from Obamacare—something President Obama would almost certainly veto.
That leaves contingency plans up to the individual states currently relying on the federal exchange. Under the health law, states that chose to create their own exchanges got federal funding to build their own websites and pay for outreach efforts. The other 34 states decided to rely on the federal portal, HealthCare.gov.
As the court case looms, state lawmakers are considering setting up their own exchanges or using workarounds to assure that their residents who are enrolled in health coverage on the exchange can continue receiving federal subsidies. Nearly 87 percent of all Obamacare enrollees qualify for a subsidy, depending on their annual household income.
(Excerpt) Read more at thefiscaltimes.com ...
Uhh, no, they wouldn't lose their coverage, there just wouldn't be any tax credit since they didn't buy it through a state exchange as is required for the tax credit.
The Republicans will ride in with a “fix” to save Obamacare from itself.
I wish we had an opposition party.
Nearly 87 percent of all Obamacare enrollees qualify for a subsidy, depending on their annual household income.///
Good Lord!! 87 percent? Why not just make subsidies mandatory. Along with the three meals in school, and make it weekends too. Have Subway or McDonalds deliver to the houses. /s Incredible.
How much is the subsidy for a brain transplant?
Or is hollow cranium the wave of the political future?
California has me paying 5k for my bronze plan. A friend has a higher end silver plan that would cost me 7k for under 1500 a year.
How is it the poorer folks get much better plans for free or near nothing and the middle class pays through the roof for bottom of the barrel services?
This country is ass backwards and subsidies need to go bye bye and give healthcare back to the private market.
I can’t see Roberts contributing to the dismantling of obamacare. He is not on our side any more. Hussein ovbviously got to him on the first ruling and once bought it is hard to become unbought. The threatened information dump could be indeed, dumped, or the payments exposed, or the relatives could be the victims of a series of not quite explainable accidents or muggings as perhaps had been suggested.
The other states didn’t decide to “rely” on the Federal exchanges, they decided to exercise their right to opt out of them.
The states that did set up their own exchanges are, generally, finding out the hard way just how suck-a** ObamaCare really is. It’s going to be interesting to see what other states among the 34 end up being pressured into following that route. If SCOTUS rules against the subsidies.
Only if the Seventeenth Amendment were repealed.
The issue is that you’re looking at Obamacare as a logically-designed, well-intentioned program to “fix” the problems with healthcare coverage. As opposed to a program cynically designed to achieve a political outcome.
The subsidies exist to hook states and poor people on “free” coverage. YOU aren’t the intended beneficiary of that - it’s poor people who have never had health coverage at all. Who were given it (for “free”!) and are now threatened with having it taken away. And will vote based on that.
YOU just happen to be a poor sap who gets to pay for others’ coverage. And those folks will now start voting to make you continue paying for it.
They’d have to pay the full price for the product they were required to buy.
WAAAAAH!
Even better question, why do you have maternity coverage?
Wanna see PelosiCare drop in cost like a rock? Exclude maternity coverage. Put it back as an optional coverage and most people will save thousands.
I have seen posts elsewhere for awhile now from posters glad that their maximum out of pocket was $6,000.
I don’t know many procedures that are $6,000 from start to finish anymore.
At work one time, a person in a town hall meeting was upset, wondering who would pay for an upcoming heart surgery. I ALMOST asked out loud, “So you expect me to?” I didn’t....need to keep the job while I can.
Congress did step in originally, to remove it intentionally to get the law passed.
Democrats were forced to set up the exchanges this way.
Wikipedia actually has a decent description of the negotiation that led the intended compromise.
Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act - Senate:
The Senate began work on its own proposals while the House was still working on the Affordable Health Care for America Act. Instead, the Senate took up H.R. 3590, a bill regarding housing tax breaks for service members. As the United States Constitution requires all revenue-related bills to originate in the House, the Senate took up this bill since it was first passed by the House as a revenue-related modification to the Internal Revenue Code. The bill was then used as the Senate's vehicle for their healthcare reform proposal, completely revising the content of the bill. The bill as amended would ultimately incorporate elements of proposals that were reported favorably by the Senate Health and Finance committees. With the Republican minority in the Senate vowing to filibuster any bill they did not support, requiring a cloture vote to end debate, 60 votes would be necessary to get passage in the Senate. At the start of the 111th Congress, Democrats had only 58 votes; the Senate seat in Minnesota ultimately won by Al Franken was still undergoing a recount, and Arlen Specter was still a Republican.To reach 60 votes, negotiations were undertaken to satisfy the demands of moderate Democrats, and to try to bring several Republican senators aboard; particular attention was given to Bob Bennett, Mike Enzi, Chuck Grassley, and Olympia Snowe. Negotiations continued even after July 7 — when Franken was sworn into office, and by which time Specter had switched parties — due to disagreements over the substance of the bill, which was still being drafted in committee, and because moderate Democrats hoped to win bipartisan support. Then, on August 25, before the bill could come up for a vote, Ted Kennedy—a longtime healthcare reform advocate—died, depriving Democrats of their 60th vote. Before Kennedy's seat was filled, attention was drawn to Snowe because of her vote in favor of the draft bill in the Finance Committee on October 15, but she explicitly stated that this did not mean she would support the final bill. Paul Kirk was appointed as Senator Kennedy's temporary replacement on September 24.
After the Finance Committee vote, negotiations turned to the demands of moderate Democrats, whose votes would be necessary to break the anticipated Republican filibuster. Majority leader Harry Reid focused on satisfying the Democratic caucus's centrist members until the holdouts came down to Joe Lieberman of Connecticut, an independent who caucused with Democrats, and Ben Nelson, a conservative Democrat, representing Nebraska. Lieberman, despite intense negotiations with Reid in search of a compromise, refused to support a public option, agreeing to vote for the bill only if the provision were not included, although it had majority support in Congress. His demand was met. There was debate among the bill's supporters over the importance of the public option, although the vast majority of supporters concluded it was a minor part of the reform overall, and Congressional Democrats' fight for it won various concessions, including conditional waivers allowing states to set up state-based public options such as Vermont's Green Mountain Care.
It's clear that the removal of federal exchanges (the "public option") was the result of compromises made to get the bill passed. Now, Democrats want the Court to say that they always intended for all states to get federal subsidies.
This case will came down to what the DEMOCRATS intended vs. what they were forced to compromise as a combined legislature after the election of Scott Brown as the Republican "40th vote."
The question is whether Roberts will give back to Democrats what they intentionally gave away now that Brown is no longer in the Senate to complain?
Will Roberts undermine the concept of good-faith negotiation by giving the Democrats what they really wanted all along but were politically unable to attain?
Republicans intended things, too, but were only able to politically attain the few concessions that they received, such as no federal subsidies in stat es with no state exchanges. If Roberts takes that away, we might as well have a new amendment that Legislative intent is only what Democrats say it is at any given time.
-PJ
Yeah, I pay 5k and have to pay another 6,500.00 deductible before insurance pays me back anything.
My family has separate policies because a family plan would have a 13k deductible before anything pays.
Between the three of us I pay $9000 a year in after tax money for not so great insurance.
Then they wonder why housing markets are collapsing; plus the new Obamacare tax of 4% on the sale of a house.
Dare die in California and your family may only see half what you saved in life, the rest going to government and losers.
"...some states are preparing contingency plans to avert a disaster if the court strikes down access to federally subsidized health care for their residents."
The writer has it backwards. The premise of the claim is false. Obamacare itself is the disaster that was not averted. Striking it down would be the first step of recovery.
Cordially,
Once again, the Republican’s stupidity is on display for all to see.
The Democrats - if they win, they win big. If they lose, their story - that it was a drafting error - has been told over and over and over since the case was first accepted for review.
The truth - which is that state-funded exchanges were a necessary compromise to pass the bill, and that that fact is well documented in floor debates and in the press - how many times have McConnell and Boehner said that? Have they EVER said it?
So, when “emergency legislation” is introduced to “correct the drafting error”, what will the Republicans do then?
I prefer Plan M
Plan C is great. Repeal every word of ObamaCare —Cruz.
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