GOP divided on ObamaCare timing

Congressional Republicans are divided over when to release a legislative fix for ObamaCare, House Budget Committee Chairman Tom Price (R-Ga.) tells The Hill.

The Supreme Court is expected to hand down a decision by month’s end in King V. Burwell. A ruling against the administration would likely to strip insurance subsidies from more than 6 million people. Price says that Republicans on Capitol Hill are still discussing whether to release a plan before or after that ruling.

“I’m in favor of before the decision because I think it’s important that we be able to point to a piece of legislation. There are discussions about whether or not to continue the subsidies for a period of time and then transition to something else, what some folks have called a bridge to the next plan. That’s a point of contention for many individuals.

{mosads}“Other than that it’s the specifics of how you get the states to be able to have the authority to regulate health coverage, what kind of pooling activity you have, how broad is it, who would be eligible for it,” Price said in an on-camera interview with The Hill’s Molly K. Hooper.

Price has introduced his own ObamaCare bill, the Restoring Equity, Saving Coverage, and Undoing Errors (RESCUE) Act, that would help the millions of people on the federal exchange who could lose ObamaCare subsidies. The legislation would create age-adjusted tax credits for health insurance, scale back regulations and give states more freedom to oversee health insurance markets.

The Georgia Republican said it’s important for the GOP to take a stand against simply extending ObamaCare.

“It doesn’t seem wise to me to say that we believe that the current law is not just unconstitutional, but what the administration has done is illegal, and then to say, but we want to continue it. That doesn’t make any intellectual sense to me. That’s one of the reasons that we introduced the RESCUE Act,” Price said.

Watch the video above to hear more from Price about the ObamaCare debate in the GOP.