There is piece on the front page now about how the Supreme Court has suddenly decided, without a Circuit court conflict, to hear the case about the federal subsidies not being included in the Affordable Care Act.
But:
Congressman Jim McDermott on Reverend Al's Politics Nation:
Well, I think -- here`s what I think they`re going to do, Rev.
They`re going to try one repeal, you know, just for a big PR event. But
then what they`re going to do is not fund the subsidies, so people who are
buying policies with subsidies won`t have the money. They`re not going to
subsidize the small businesses that are giving health care to their
workers. They`re going to undercut it in a thousand ways, because some
things need to be extended in this session of the Congress.
If they don`t do that, they can wreck it by simply cutting it out for a lot
of people. They will not be able to affect the people who got on to
Medicaid. Those people are in, they`re safe. They can`t be touched. But
they`ll try to get the middle class, that`s out there struggling and buying
their own health insurance policy, and they can do it because they do not
want to help the middle class.
(transcript
here )
Jump
But in the passage quoted above, Congressman Jim McDermott sounds the alarm that the ACA subsidies will have to be extended by the GOP House for them to continue to be funded. And he says specifically that he thinks they will NOT extend them.
And it sounds like Senator Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut is worried about this as well. Here he is on Lawrence O'Donnell's show last night (transcript here):
There is a group that has come to
Washington to try to drown government in the bath water, so to speak. And
they can do it, either by refusing reauthorizations or by trying to
strangle revenue, which is ultimately the way the government is run and
needs to be funded. And we may well have a fight on our hands with that
fringe minority of the majority now in the United States Senate that may be
beyond Mitch McConnell`s control.
Watch it
here.
I hope there's a game plan on this. I've enjoyed having health insurance this year.