With outright repeal efforts nowhere, the GOP is attacking president’s signature health care law piece by piece, and two Tennessee Republicans believe they’ve found a way to unravel the legislation.
The Affordable Care Act gives states like Tennessee a choice: set up your own health care exchange or the federal government will do it for you. Low and middle income earners can get a tax credit to help buy insurance off the exchange.
But the text of the law only explicitly allows the tax credit for people in a state exchange.
The Internal Revenue Service has stepped in to say the credit would apply to either state or federal – a move which Tennessee Congressman Scott DesJarlais calls an overreach of power. He and fellow Republican Phil Roe have introduced legislation to restrict the IRS’s ability to collect funds to pay for subsidies in federal exchanges.
“That language simply isn’t in there. It’s in there for the state run exchanges, but not the federal. And as we know now there’s about 26 states that have not set up a state exchange and they seem reluctant to do so.”
Tennessee is one of the twenty-six, though it is laying the groundwork for a potential exchange.
Under DesJarlais’ legislation, if the state failed to create an exchange, thousands of low and middle income Tennesseans would lose-out on the health care subsidy.
Conservatives are also planning to take the battle over the law’s language to the courts, which has some scholars anticipating another high profile Supreme Court challenge to the law.
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