The
death of the Graham-Cassidy bill seems to stop the clock on ACA repeal. But our experts think it may start up again -- though you'll probably have to wait over a year for it.
"Word is the Freedom Caucus guys" -- an
extremely conservative GOP House faction -- "want health reform as part of the budget resolution the House must pass to start tax reform," says John F. Williams, former Capitol Hill staffer now with law firm Hall, Render, Killian, Heath & Lyman in Washington, D.C. "So, if that happens, I think you'll see significant parts of Graham-Cassidy revived."
Other wonks, such as Eric D. Fader of the Day Pitney law firm in New York City, don't see them having the votes to get it done.
Rob Fuller, a partner at the Nelson Hardiman firm in Los Angeles and co-author with Harry Nelson of From ObamaCare To TrumpCare: Why You Should Care, doesn't see it happening either: "The conservative ‘funders’ will want comprehensive tax reform more than an Obamacare repeal, so we are predicting no more action for the remainder of this year," he says.
But that doesn't mean repeal-and-replace is fully dead.
"The President is no ideologue," says Fuller. "He just wants a deal, any deal. So we would expect that the White House would pursue a dual strategy of, one, hindering Obamacare through executive action as much as possible -- for example, by meddling with the subsidies and exchange rules on an administrative basis -- and, two, working with the Democratic leadership toward a '60-vote' bill."
But it won't happen quickly, says Fuller. "Congress will be in election year mode after the first of January, and the status of certain key legislators -- Senator McCain chief among them -- remains uncertain. So absent either a full collapse of one or more of the exchanges or a breakthrough of support of Democrats and moderate Republicans, we would expect the issue to be stalled until after November 2018. The makeup of the new Congress and the status of the Senate post November 2018 will dictate the direction of fixing Obamacare versus the repeal and replace initiated this year."
So mark your calendars for January 3, 2019, when the 116th Congress convenes, and we get to do all this again -- unless the membership changes drastically, in which case
another model may be on the table.