Does he ever have a workable plan?
The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities takes a look at that
House Republican list of things they'd do in case the Supreme Court guts Obamacare subsidies. Given that they haven't released anything in the way of legislation, and won't unless the court forces them to, the CBPP had little to work with but didn't have a hard time concluding that it's
"unworkable."
The plan would reportedly allow people who are in states using federal marketplaces and who are receiving subsidies through that marketplace to continue receiving them only through the end of this year; any new enrollees who would have been eligible for subsidies would apparently receive no assistance at all. Those states would then have the option to accept a block grant—a fixed amount of federal funding—to use however they want, with apparently few if any federal strings attached. The block grant would be available for only two years.
But the block grant idea is just a mirage. It's hard to see how many, if any, states with a federal marketplace would provide meaningful assistance through the block grant to people who are now getting subsidies. By the time states could decide whether to accept the block grant, design a new program that it will finance, and pass a law to put it in place, much of the two-year period would be gone. And that doesn't even count the time—perhaps years—it would take to get such a program up and running. Thus, the block grant proposal wouldn't likely do anything to help the millions of people who would lose their subsidies in federal marketplace states.
That's what it
wouldn't do—actually and effectively help people. Here's what it
would do, and immediately. It would repeal the requirements that people have health insurance and that employers with more than 50 full-time employees provide it, "generating substantial coverage losses in all states as millions fewer people enroll in marketplace plans, job-based coverage, and public programs" as CBPP describes. New enrollees in Obamacare plans in the 34 states affected would not be eligible for subsidies, so there wouldn't be many new enrollees.
Eventually, the system would wither and die. That's not the dramatic death Republicans have been promising all these years with their promises of repeal. It would give them the opportunity to say they did something, however. It doesn't matter if the bill is crap and wouldn't work. That's never stopped them before. It doesn't matter that a bill like this would be vetoed. That just gives them another opportunity—blame the whole thing on President Obama.