Is Obamacare on table for 'fiscal cliff' talks?
House Speaker John Boehner says it should be, but with a Democratic president and Senate, the reality could be that Republicans will only be able to chip away at the edges of Obamacare.
President Obama acknowledges House Speaker John Boehner of Ohio while speaking to reporters in the Roosevelt Room of the White House in Washington earlier this month.
Carolyn Kaster/AP
Will Obamacare be targeted for possible budget cuts during upcoming talks in Washington aimed at averting a fiscal crisis in January? Speaker of the House John Boehner insists that it should be. In an he wrote for The Cincinnati Enquirer earlier this week he called the president鈥檚 signature Affordable Care Act a massive, expensive, and unworkable government program.
鈥淭hat鈥檚 why I鈥檝e been clear that the law has to stay on the table as both parties discuss ways to solve our nation鈥檚 massive debt challenge,鈥� he said.
Democrats, unsurprisingly, see things otherwise. The quotes an administration official saying this is something President Obama opposes. A top Senate Democratic aid calls the idea 鈥渁bsolutely鈥� a nonstarter, according to Mr. Stein.
The reality is that aspects of Mr. Obama鈥檚 health reforms likely will be discussed when negotiations over the so-called 鈥渇iscal cliff鈥� heat up. But another reality is that Obamacare is now the law of the land, and isn鈥檛 going to be repealed or changed in any major way as a result of a final fiscal deal.
That last point is in conflict with Boehner鈥檚 expressed wishes. The part about negotiating cuts in the law was only a few lines in his recent opinion piece. Overall he said that he and the GOP leadership would continue to try and repeal the entire law. 鈥淎s was the case before the election, Obamacare has to go,鈥� he wrote.
Well, good luck with that. With a Democratic president and Senate still in place, the best House Republicans can hope for is to chip away the law鈥檚 rough edges. As respected Washington health-care policy consultant Bob Laszewski wrote on his blog following the election, the Affordable Care Act鈥檚 fate is now settled.
鈥淚t will be implemented,鈥� wrote Mr. Laszewski. 鈥淚t will also have to be changed but not until after it is implemented and the required changes become obvious and unavoidable. We can all debate what those things will be ... but it doesn鈥檛 matter what we think will happen 鈥� time will tell.鈥�
As to what aspects of the law might be tweaked in exchange for GOP acceptance of increased tax revenues from the rich, the most obvious are the subsidies intended to help lower income Americans purchase health insurance when the law takes full effect at the beginning of 2014.
As the law now stands, those with incomes up to 400 percent of the poverty level could qualify for at least some aid. But as senior editorial writer Conn Carroll in the Washington Examiner, the original version of the Affordable Care Act passed by the Senate Finance Committee was less generous.
鈥淩epublicans think they can get Obama to go back to those levels of Obamacare spending,鈥� writes Carroll.
Other obvious targets include various boards and oversight panels that the law would authorize. Among these, the Affordable Care Act sets aside $10 billion for a Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation. The CMMI is supposed to test methods of saving money in big government health-care entitlement programs.
The GOP thinks this is a waste and wants to reduce the group鈥檚 funding, writes congressional reporter Sahil Kapur of .
鈥淭op Republicans have floated the idea before in previous debt reduction talks and, with the fiscal cliff negotiations coming up, will hope to reduce the funding for CMMI,鈥� writes Kapur.