With the first hearing for the Supreme Court case that could strike down key components of Obamacare a little more than a week away, Capitol Hill is buzzing with speculations about how Congress would fix healthcare in the aftermath of a disruptive ruling.
Healthcare advocates are already predicting doom and gloom if the Court rules against Obamacare in King v. Burwell; 9 million people would lose their healthcare subsidies, and the American Public Health Association predicts that 9,800 Americans would die as a result.
Republicans have proposed various modifications to Obamacare if the court were to rule the federal exchange for subsidies illegal, but the prospects of Democrats agreeing to them seem unlikely.
At a panel at the American Enterprise Institute, visiting fellow Ramesh Ponneru outlined the likely scenarios after a ruling against Obamacare and concluded that, at least in the short term, Congress would likely do nothing and try to pin the blame on the other side.
The first scenario would be for Congress to pass a brief legislation legalizing the federal exchange. The case doesn’t contest the constitutionality of Obamacare, merely that its current form doesn’t abide by the letter of the Affordable Care Act. However, it’s unlikely that Republicans would grant such a wholesale concession to Democrats.
A second possibility would have Republicans offer to legalize the federal subsidies in exchange for scaling back some parts of Obamacare such as the medical device tax or the individual mandate.
“It’s pretty hard to thread the needle here” Ponneru said. “It’s pretty easy to think of things that would fail on both counts, that Democrats would want to block and Republicans wouldn’t go for.”
