Eyes Turn Back To Future Of Insurance Subsidies After Replacement Bill Collapse
Republicans could gut much of the Affordable Care Act by taking action to halt insurer payments, which House GOP lawmakers are already challenging in court.
The Wall Street Journal:
After GOP Bill’s Failure, Health-Law Lawsuit Takes Center Stage
President Donald Trump and GOP lawmakers, seeking to regroup following the collapse of the effort to repeal the Affordable Care Act, have an option for gutting the health law relatively quickly: They could halt billions in payments insurers get under the law. House Republicans were already challenging those payments in court as invalid. Their lawsuit to stop the payments, which they call illegal, was suspended as Republicans pushed to replace the ACA, but it could now resume—or the Trump administration could decline to contest it and simply drop the payments. Mr. Trump could unilaterally end the payments regardless of the lawsuit. (Armour, 3/27)
In other news —
The New York Times:
2018 Dilemma For Republicans: Which Way Now On Obamacare?
As they come to terms with their humiliating failure to undo the Affordable Care Act, Republicans eyeing next year’s congressional campaign are grappling with a new dilemma: Do they risk depressing their conservative base by abandoning the repeal effort or anger a broader set of voters by reviving a deeply unpopular bill even closer to the midterm elections? (Martin, 3/28)
The Washington Post:
Paul Ryan: House Republicans Will Continue Their Push For Health-Care Reform This Year
House Speaker Paul D. Ryan told Republican donors Monday that he intends to continue pushing for an overhaul of the nation’s health-care system by working “on two tracks” as he also pursues other elements of President Trump’s agenda. "We are going to keep getting at this thing,” Ryan said three days after intraparty opposition forced him to pull the American Health Care Act after it became clear it did not have enough Republican votes to pass. (DeBonis, 3/27)
Politico:
Gallup: Trump Hits New Low After Health Care Flop
President Donald Trump’s approval rating slipped to a new low Monday in the Gallup daily tracking poll, the first measure of Trump’s job performance following his administration’s failure to move a new health care law through Congress. Only 36 percent of Americans approve of the way Trump is handling his job as president in interviews conducted last Friday through Sunday, a time period entirely after Republicans abandoned their bill to replace the 2010 Affordable Care Act. (Shepard, 3/27)
NPR Fact Check:
Trump Says Obamacare Is 'Exploding.' That's Not Quite True
President Trump is doing his best to put a good face on defeat in his party's attempt to replace the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare. His strategy is simple: declare that the law is failing. And he is selling that message in his own distinctly Trumpian way: concocting it out of simple, bold words and then hammering that message home, over and over: Obamacare, in his words, will "explode." (Kurtzleben and Kodjak, 3/27)
The New York Times:
In Health Bill’s Defeat, Medicaid Comes Of Age
When it was created more than a half century ago, Medicaid almost escaped notice. Front-page stories hailed the bigger, more controversial part of the law that President Lyndon B. Johnson signed that July day in 1965 — health insurance for elderly people, or Medicare, which the American Medical Association had bitterly denounced as socialized medicine. The New York Times did not even mention Medicaid, conceived as a small program to cover poor people’s medical bills. (Zernike, Goodnough and Belluck, 3/27)