Sen. Lamar Alexander isn't going to lose any sleep over your lost health insurance.
Some things never change. The Republican House is
voting to repeal Obamacare, and Politico is
reporting that Republicans are still infighting over whether or not to replace the law if the Supreme Court decides to gut it this year. And one top Republican senator suggests that maybe they just won't do anything at all if the law is destroyed by the court.
Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), who is meeting weekly about the health law with Sens. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) and Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), wouldn't say if the GOP has ruled out new legislation to aid those who would lose the subsidies.
"We've got a number of Republican senators who are talking," said Alexander, who chairs the Senate's Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee. "We are talking with Reps. [Paul] Ryan and [Fred] Upton in the House. We want to be responsible about repairing any damage that Obamacare does. If it creates a shock to the system by causing 5 million Americans suddenly to put their insurance and their subsidies at risk, then we need to think if there's anything we need to do. Maybe there's not." [emphasis added]
Note that this is one of the guys in charge of figuring out what to do in the Senate on the issue. Another one, Hatch, is just as uncertain that they really have to do anything at all to make sure that 5 million people don't lose their insurance.
Asked about the all-out push for a repeal, rather than simply fixing the law, Hatch said: "Whatever you do, the president is going to veto it. That's a nice thing to say, but it doesn’t necessarily mean that that's what's going to happen."
Which, of course, is not true. If Congress simply fixed the law by clarifying the one phrase that the court challenge is hanging on, of course president Obama would sign it. But that's not going to happen because there's no way all of the Republicans in the House and the Senate would agree that the best course of action would be to allow millions of people to keep their health insurance. After all, who needs health insurance when we have emergency rooms? When it comes right down to it, that's their healthcare plan, and always has been.