ObamaCare Ransom Demands – Subsidy Extension for the Mandates

If the Supreme Court rules against ObamaCare’s subsides the GOP has offered to allow subsidies to continue until 2016, in exchange for gutting the mandates. This isn’t the only proposal we have seen from the GOP in this regard, but is instead it is the common theme behind a number of different GOP based ideas.

What are the Mandate?

The mandates are the employer requirement to insure full-time workers (employer shared responsibility) and the individual requirement to get health insurance (individual shared responsibility).

Why This is Silly

Since the mandates and subsidies are the most important parts of the Affordable Care Act in terms of keeping the whole thing together, this is a rather silly offer. If you remove the mandates, there is no money to pay for the subsidies. So you may as well just remove all subsidies in general. But this is just from a logistics POV, not a political one.

The Political Side

What makes it even more silly is that the GOP stands to have a lot of Americans pissed at them going into the 2016 elections due to them spurring on the events that have potentially jeopardized the subsidies of 7.5 million in 36 states (including some blue states, but mostly red states).

Given this Democrats should probably respond with the following counter offer. “No, a better solution for you to save face would probably just be setting up exchanges or fixing the sentence in the law that the whole fuss is over in the first place.”

The sentence: “An exchange established by the State“. Just so we are clear, aside from ideology the actual court battle is about the intentions of these words. 7.5 million lives held in jeopardy over one sentence.

Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.), who is leading the Senate GOP’s response to King v. Burwell, said Republicans will be willing to strike a deal with Obama to ensure that the 7.5 million people who stand to lose their subsidies are protected, at least until the 2016 elections.

But in return, they would demand that Obama to do something he has long resisted: nix the employer and individual mandates for insurance coverage.

Learn more about this story from The Hill.

Learn more about the subsidy lawsuit King V. Burwell

Learn more about subsidies

Learn more about the individual mandate

Learn more about the employer mandate