Republicans plan to pressure President Barack Obama to pull the plug on two central Obamacare tenets if the Supreme Court rules against the healthcare law in a battle over subsidies for millions of Americans.
According to The Hill, Wyoming GOP Sen. John Barrasso is willing to come to an arrangement with the White House to guarantee that 7.5 million people will keep their Obamacare tax breaks until at least 2016 if the government loses the King v. Burwell case.
But Barrasso, who is in charge of the Senate's reaction to the case when it is decided by the top court early this summer, wants Obama in return to agree to end the employer and individual mandates in his signature domestic policy.
"Is the president going to say, 'tough, I'm going to veto that?'" Barrasso told The Hill. "There will be, as part of that [deal], things we want to have happen."
The lawsuit brought by Obamacare opponents argues that the law's literal wording allows the federal government to offer subsidies only in states that have set up their own insurance markets or exchanges.
The administration and Democratic lawmakers who wrote the law maintain that the clear intent of the law was to
provide subsidies to people in every state. But if the plaintiffs succeed, beneficiaries living in the 37 states where the federal government is running the exchanges would lose their subsidies, The Hill reported.
Under the individual mandate, most Americas are threatened with a tax penalty for not having healthcare coverage, while under the employer mandate, companies with a certain number of staffers have to offer coverage to them starting in 2016 or also face penalties.
Republicans are fighting among themselves over how to handle a victory in the case, and have proposed several Obamacare alternatives with some form of temporary financial aid for people who could lose their subsidies.
But Democrats offer a far simpler alternative — change the language of the law to make it clear what the wording was meant to mean in the first place, according to the political news website.
"The president can say, here's our one-page bill," Republican Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, who is opposed to the congressional efforts to force Obamacare changes by winning the court case, told a D.C. audience on Thursday.
"The president's going to stand up and say, 'meet so-and-so who's got cancer. Meet so-and-so who's got diabetes," Jindal, a longtime Obamacare foe, said. "And he'll say, 'these mean stingy Republicans simply won't make a one-page change in the law.'"
Jindal understands that Republicans risk the wrath of millions of Americans by ending the subsidies without agreeing to another plan, which could pose problems in the 2016 general elections.
Barrasso is in favor of revising Obamacare rather than repealing it if the nation's highest court supports the plaintiffs, even though conservative groups such as the Heritage Foundation are calling for the death of the healthcare law if the government loses King v. Burwell.
But Barrasso, the leader of the Senate Republican Policy Committee, believes that if moderates and conservatives turn on each other it would reduce the GOP's bargaining position on Obamacare.
"Since we don't have a willing partner in the White House, the best idea for actually fixing healthcare is not things that the president isn't going to sign," he said. "He's not going to work with us on this. So we have to have a Republican president in 2016."
© 2025 Newsmax. All rights reserved.