Congressional Republicans may be mulling a plan to repeal Obamacare before President-elect Trump takes office, a top GOP leader said Wednesday.
“Nothing has been decided but that is certainly one of the options,” Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn, R-Texas, told reporters after a closed-door GOP meeting on Wednesday.
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President-elect Trump and the GOP-controlled Congress can repeal Obamacare pretty easily, but the biggest question is when and if there will be a transition while a replacement gets crafted.
Trump has promised to repeal Obamacare in its entirety and congressional Republicans are on board. However, when the repeal would take effect is largely in doubt, as some Republicans are wary of immediately ending coverage for millions of people without a replacement.
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Republicans could pass a budget reconciliation bill that gradually sunsets the law, preserving its subsidies and Medicaid expansion for a time while they agree on a replacement. They’ve already got a script for that approach, after passing a reconciliation bill last January which President Obama vetoed.
Or Congress could pass a replacement plan right away by coupling it with a repeal bill, although it’s questionable Republicans could find consensus in such a short timeframe.
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A nationwide exit poll shows almost half of voters believe Obamacare went too far.
About 45 percent told NBC News that the law went too far, while 31 percent believe it didn’t go far enough and 18 percent said it was just right, according to a nationwide exit poll released Tuesday.
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The final Obamacare open enrollment of President Obama’s presidency starts Tuesday with enrollees facing fewer insurers and higher premiums for health coverage.
However, the impact will largely depend on where the enrollee lives, as some states are faring far worse than others in plan offerings and rates.
The administration wants to get 13.8 million people to sign up between Nov. 1 and Jan. 31, and it hopes about 11 million will pay for coverage throughout 2017. However, some experts doubt whether the administration can reach that goal because of higher plan costs.
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House lawmakers are angry that one of the last taxpayer-funded Obamacare plans wants to move to for-profit status, saying that the millions of dollars provided in startup loans were meant to go to nonprofits.
Republican leaders of the House Ways and Means Committee wrote to the Obama administration and the Maryland consumer-oriented and operated plan Evergreen Health, which wants to become a for-profit health insurer.
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The Obama administration hasn’t done enough to ensure that the right people get Obamacare subsidies, according to a new report from congressional Republicans.
The report details earlier investigations into Obamacare’s verification process for income eligibility, which screens whether a person is eligible for tax credits. It also criticizes the administration for relaxing standards for income eligibility.
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A top administration official said customers facing big Obamacare premium increases next year will need to shop around to find a cheaper plan, despite some states having only one insurer offering plans.
Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Burwell told CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer Tuesday that the premium hikes, which will average 25 percent across all Obamacare plans, won’t be so bad for customers.
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Obamacare enrollees will face varying rate hikes depending on which state they live in. Insurers in some states had underpriced their products in the first few years of the marketplaces set up under President Obama’s health care law and now are trying to make up for their losses with big cost increases. The highest AVERAGE premium increases are in Arizona, 116%; Oklahoma, 69%; Tennessee, 63%; and Minnesota, 59%. Millions of people in other states will find premiums for their current plans spiking at least as high.
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Some states with tight Senate races are seeing their Obamacare rates climbing next year even more than the average 22 percent increase announced by the Obama administration on Monday, as Republicans use the spikes to try to get the upper hand in a close battle for control of the chamber.
Two states with very tight Senate races are facing big increases: Pennsylvania with 53 percent and North Carolina with 40 percent. Incumbent Sens. Pat Toomey in Pennsylvania and Richard Burr in North Carolina are in close re-election battles.
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