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4 Reasons Why Republicans Won’t Be Able To Repeal Obamacare
Responding to Thursdays Supreme Court decision upholding the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act, Congressional Republicans have scheduled a vote in the House to repeal the law and Mitt Romney pledged to undo the measure if hes elected president in November. But unless the GOP wins a super majority in the Senate a scenario no one thinks is plausible it can do little more than weaken Obamacares regulations and defund some of its provisions. Here is why:
1) Romney has no authority to issue waivers. Romney has promised to expand a provision of the Affordable Care Act that allows states to opt out of certain sections of the law to permit states to ignore it entirely. But the executive branch and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) likely dont have the authority to grant such broad waivers. According to the law, HHS (together with the IRS) have waiver authority, but only if the states meet very specific requirements. Neither have blanket waiver authority, which would have to come from Congress. Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) the author of the waiver provision has challenged Romneys claims, saying, Anybody who tries to move outside the standards of the bill which is the coverage and costs and the like well Ill certainly fight that. But I think lots of other people will too.
2) Congress cant repeal the full law through reconciliation. Without the necessary 60 votes in the Senate for full repeal, Republicans are pledging to use a budget reconciliation bill to undo the ACA. But this process would only apply to the budget-related elements of the law and would thus leave many portions including the mandate intact. As health care expert Robert Laszewski put it, Romney could end up creating a chaotic environment driven by enormous uncertainty over just which parts of the new health care law would be implementedfor consumers, health care providers, and insurers.
3) Republicans have nothing to replace it with. David Frum explains that since the expansion of coverage provisions go into effect in 2014, Romney would have just one year to both repeal and replace the law. Republicans havent even coalesced around a single plan and many in the party believe that the federal government should leave health care alone and want to leave the entire reform process to the states. Thus, if replacement does not happen in the first 100 days, it wont happen at allthat is, it wont happen as a single measure, but rather will take the form of dozens of small incremental changes adopted episodically over the next 20 years.
-- snip --
Rest of article here: http://thinkprogress.org/health/2012/06/28/508503/4-reasons-why-republicans-wont-be-able-to-repeal-obamacare/
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4 Reasons Why Republicans Won’t Be Able To Repeal Obamacare (Original Post)
Tx4obama
Jun 2012
OP
Raster
(20,998 posts)1. The number one reason: Rmoney is NOT GOING TO BE ELECTED!