Republicans were slow to prepare for King v. Burwell, the Supreme Court case being argued this week about Obamacare’s legally dubious subsidies for insurance purchases in 36 states. Through early February, it seemed as though many Republicans were instinctively falling into one of two opposed but similarly wrongheaded camps. One group was under the impression that a victory for the plaintiffs would spell the end of Obamacare and leave them with no need to do any legislating. Another recognized the potential for a political backlash if millions of people suddenly saw their health-insurance premiums spike after the conservative justices ruled, but was so fearful of this backlash that it was willing to vote to put the contested subsidies on a firm legal footing and be done.
Over the last month, Republicans seem to have made some progress in coming to a consensus that avoids both of these mistakes. An op-ed by Senators Orrin Hatch, John Barasso, and Lamar Alexander in today’s Washington Post, and another op-ed by Senator Ben Sasse in the Wall Street Journal last week, have outlined a different and better approach: one that protects the affected people from more government-induced disruption to their health-care arrangements while also moving away from Obamacare.
The emerging Republican solution would offer subsidies for the affected people. But it would extend them only temporarily, forcing a renewal of the health-care debate under the next president. It would refuse to resurrect the individual and employer mandates, both of which would be severely weakened by a plaintiff victory. And it would allow people in the affected states to escape many of Obamacare’s regulatory strictures. The federal role in health care would be smaller, the role of state governments and markets larger. The country would be freed from as much of Obamacare as is practicable under this president.
None of this would happen, of course, without a political fight. President Obama would be sure to greet a plaintiff victory with denunciations and demands for a restoration of the status quo ante. That certainty makes it all the more heartening that Republicans are finding some defensible ground on which to stand for that fight.