Several high-profile Republican governors are building pressure on Congress to come up with a plan if the Supreme Court decides to void subsidies for millions of people in their states.
Florida Gov. Rick Scott and Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker both said Tuesday they are opposed to any kind of state-level fix to restore ObamaCare subsidies in case the administration loses in court.
“I think it has to be a federal fix,” Scott told reporters at the event he hosted Tuesday for GOP presidential candidates, according to The Washington Post.
{mosads}Walker, who attended the summit as a potential candidate, reiterated his previous stance that he would “ultimately push back” if pressed to come with his own plan to prevent chaos in the healthcare marketplace.
“This is a problem created by this president and the previous Congress,” he said, according to the Post. “It’s something that requires a solution at the federal level. States didn’t create this problem, the federal government did. And they should fix it.”
Besides Florida and Wisconsin, several other states have ruled out an ObamaCare rescue.
Louisiana, Mississippi, Nebraska and South Carolina have all previously said that they would not act on the state-level to restore the subsidies.
At least one state has said that it would take action regardless of Congress’s plans.
Pennsylvania’s Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf announced Tuesday he has created a blueprint to start a state-based exchange, which would allow it to continue receiving ObamaCare subsidies.
The White House has repeatedly said that there is “no easy fix” for addressing the gaps in coverage that would result from a decision against ObamaCare.
When asked about a potential legislative solution on Wednesday, spokesman Josh Earnest cast doubt on Congress’s ability to act.
“We have not seen much of an appetite from Republicans in Congress to working constructively to address this question,” he said, accusing the GOP of trying to “play politics in a cynical way with this issue.”
He added that new legislation is “hopefully not an eventual reality we have to consider.”
Republicans in Congress revealed this week they would not be presenting their full contingency plan until after the decision.
– Jordan Fabian contributed.