Ram Allen, vice president of national affairs and government affairs for FreedomWorks, a conservative legislative advocacy group, said the letter was “another attempt by Obama loyalists to distract from his failure to deliver on Obamacare without delaying vital Obamacare benefits and services.”
“Rather than fix the law itself, as the House Republicans have promised they will do, Democrats are now trying to distract from it in order to avoid their own defeat by offering politically-motivated distractions such as Obamacare-lite,” he said.
Republicans in Congress have been working on health care legislation in recent years, but Congress has yet to settle on anything beyond a short-term framework.
While Democrats point to Republican leadership’s inaction as a sign of dysfunction that threatens to derail the rest of Obama’s ambitious agenda, the law already faces a series of fights that are likely to cause political headaches — starting with the court fight over federal subsidies to help people buy coverage.
The health law’s ability to keep people covered depends heavily on a complex and rapidly changing range of factors, from the amount of money people can get through an insurance marketplace to whether their state provides a public option.
Republican lawmakers have long sought federal action to provide subsidies and other aid to make sure people in some states that have rejected expanded Medicaid coverage can still get help.
In June, the Obama administration asked a court to reinstate the state Medicaid expansion as part of its fight to keep insurance coverage for those who gain coverage through the federal health law’s insurance exchanges.
Health insurance companies say the states that rejected the expansion could force them to raise their premiums or force them to reduce services in ways that they could not afford. Such a move could also drive millions out of the health care market.
The Obama administration has also sued New York and Illinois in legal challenges to the Medicaid expansion. If the court approves the states’ arguments, it could effectively end the issue for a few years. If the Supreme Court rules against the states, however, the expansion would then go back on the books.
The House Republican legislation would keep health care subsidies available to those who are in states where the federal government has not launched a Medicaid expansion. But it would also allow the federal government to waive those restrictions for states and insurers until March 31, 2017, to ensure that states have time to adjust to the changing realities of the health care law.