OVERNIGHT HEALTHCARE: GOP regroups after ObamaCare setback

Republicans are back to square one in their fight against ObamaCare now that the Supreme Court has upheld the subsidies at the heart of the law.

GOP lawmakers in both chambers of Congress had been crafting plans to roll back pieces of ObamaCare in the event that the Supreme Court ruled against the law in King v. Burwell.

But with the high court on Thursday delivering an emphatic 6-3 ruling in favor of the administration, those legislative proposals are moot, forcing Republicans back to the drawing board.

{mosads}Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) vowed Thursday that Republicans will “continue to fight tooth and nail to repeal” the Affordable Care Act. 

“Today’s decision doesn’t change the fact that ObamaCare has been a disaster for the millions of hardworking American families who have seen their health care costs skyrocket or lost their insurance entirely,” he added. 

But the court’s ruling leaves Republicans with limited options, with President Obama certain to veto any legislation that scales back his signature domestic program.

Conservative Republicans are now focusing on using the process known as reconciliation to repeal the law with just 51 votes needed in the Senate, instead of the usual 60.

But the reconciliation process is fraught with difficulty for the GOP because it cannot be used to make policy changes that add to the deficit.

The official scorekeeper for Congress last week estimated that repealing ObamaCare root and branch would increase the deficit by more than $300 billion over a decade — illustrating the challenge ahead. Read more here.

MORE ABOUT THE DECISION ITSELF: The 6-3 decision authored by Chief Justice John Roberts is a huge victory for President Obama; it ensures that consumers purchasing health insurance on the federal exchange in roughly 34 states will continue to be able to do so.

In his decision, Roberts argued that a ruling killing off the subsidies would set the state markets into a death spiral, and that this could not have been the intent of Congress. 

“The combination of no tax credits and an ineffective coverage requirement could well push a State’s individual insurance market into a death spiral. It is implausible that Congress meant the Act to operate in this manner,” he wrote.

“The argument that the phrase ‘established by the State’ would be superfluous if Congress meant to extend tax credits to both State and Federal Exchanges is unpersuasive.”

In a dissent, Justice Antonin Scalia lambasted the Obama administration for what he called the “somersaults of statutory interpretation” in the healthcare law.  

“We should start calling this law SCOTUScare,” wrote Scalia, in an unsubtle reference to an earlier decision written by Roberts that declared constitutional the law’s mandate that people buy insurance. Read more here.

FROM DEMS: COURT SAVED THE GOP. Democrats praising Thursday’s Supreme Court decision upholding a central element of ObamaCare are suggesting that even Republican opponents of the law are relieved by the ruling. 

Publicly, GOP leaders are lamenting the high court’s decision to uphold insurance subsidies for patients in states where the federal government oversees the process.

But had the Supreme Court ruled against the president, millions of patients receiving subsidies in the 34 federal exchange states likely would have lost their health insurance. That would have put the Republican supporters of the lawsuit in the punishing position of devising a new system to get those people new coverage — or face the blame for the spike in the uninsured rate heading into the 2016 elections.

Rep. Steny Hoyer (Md.), the Democratic whip, said there are early signs the Republicans are privately thankful they won’t be forced into that political pickle.

“I was just up on the floor. I saw Paul Ryan. He was lamenting this decision with a very broad smile,” Hoyer told a small gathering of reporters in his office in the Capitol. “The Republicans have just been saved from themselves by the Supreme Court of the United States.” Read more here. 

State by state 

ObamaCare ruling brings relief to Florida

Texas is a big winner in high court’s ObamaCare ruling 

What we’re reading

Some Republicans secretly relieved by ObamaCare ruling

Obama gains vindication and secures legacy

Roberts quietly burns Scalia

What you might have missed from The Hill

Van Hollen to GOP: End ‘numbskull quest’ to destroy ObamaCare

Anger from Republicans at high court 

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