In a move that is a relief to both insurers and others who hope to see the Affordable Care Act function, Speaker Paul Ryan and other leading Republicans have signaled that they will not try to halt billions of dollars in subsidies to ACA marketplace health plans.
Ryan suggested that the payments will continue at least through 2017, if not 2018 as well.
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That position comes despite the fact that it was the Republican-led House of Representatives that sued the Obama administration over the payments it was making to insurers as part of the ACA. In a May ruling last year, a federal judge sided with Republicans, finding that the administration had distributed the money without required approval by Congress.
The Obama administration immediately appealed the ruling, preventing it from going into effect. The litigation is still ongoing, despite Obama's departure.
In recent weeks, particularly in light of the GOP's failure to pass its ACA replacement bill, there has been speculation that President Trump could hasten the "explosion" of the health law that he has predicted by simply dropping the appeal of the lawsuit, thus terminating payments that insurers depend on to offer discounted health plans to low-income customers in the ACA marketplace.
Ryan now says that, for philosophical purposes, he does not want the House to drop the lawsuit. But he does not want the payments to stop either.
"While the lawsuit is being litigated then the administration funds these benefits. That's how they've been doing it and I don't see any change in that," he told reporters on Thursday.
Rep. Greg Walden, R-Ore., chairman of the powerful Energy and Commerce Committee, similarly told the New York Times that he would do "everything" to keep the payments going. He suggested that Congress vote to appropriate the money. That way, Republicans could provide the subsidies without conceding the separation of powers argument they are making in their lawsuit against the executive branch.
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