The GOP Could Extend Health Subsidies Up to Two Years if Supreme Court invalidates tax credits

Republican leaders are coalescing around a plan to extend the health law’s tax credits for as long as two years, while repealing other parts of the law, if the Supreme Court invalidates the credits.

The high court is expected to rule by the end of June on whether to restrict the 2010 law’s tax credits—used by low- and moderate-income consumers to help pay their insurance premiums—to the handful of states that opted to set up their own insurance exchanges. 

An abrupt disappearance of the credits in most of the country would likely throw the health-care overhaul into disarray, presenting the GOP majority in both houses with a quandary over how to proceed.

Four GOP committee chairmen briefed House Republicans Wednesday on proposals that would maintain federal assistance for people to buy health insurance to 2016 and beyond. At the same time, their proposals would strike the law’s mandates that most individuals have coverage or pay a penalty and that large employers offer health benefits or pay a penalty. A separate briefing was held for Senate Republicans Wednesday.

[...]

... House and Senate leaders have been inching toward support for a short-term preservation of the credits as a way to buy themselves time to enact broader changes to the law—and elect a Republican to the White House to help them do so. They still face opposition from conservatives, including some presidential candidates, and likely some members of the House Freedom Caucus, a group of the most conservative House Republicans.

RELATED STORY: House bill would prevent 
extension of ObamaCare subsidies

“I do not believe we should extend subsidies,” presidential candidate Sen. Ted Cruz (R., Texas) said Wednesday after the Senate briefing. He said states should be allowed to opt out of the health law. “Obamacare has proved to be a train wreck,” he said. ...

Read the rest of the story HERE.

As an astute Commenter posted at the original source of this story points out:

If "Republican leaders are coalescing around a plan to extend the health law’s tax credits for as long as two years..."

then what was the purpose of bringing King v. Burwell to the Supreme Court?

BINGO!

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