WASHINGTON _ Rep. Tom Rice, R-S.C., said Monday that he was worried that President Donald Trump would use a pending lawsuit, born of a bill Rice introduced, to force the Affordable Care Act into a death spiral before Congress agrees on a replacement for the health care law.
When Rice was a freshman lawmaker in 2014, he introduced the STOP Resolution, which launched legal action against President Barack Obama for what Republicans in the House considered to be executive action beyond his constitutional authority.
Specifically, the Republican-controlled House said the Obama administration was spending money that had not been appropriated to reimburse health insurers.
The case that followed _ House v. Burwell _ went to the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, which ruled against the administration. The administration appealed, leaving the district court ruling unenforced.
The Trump administration can choose to drop the appeal at any time, and if it does, the government could stop reimbursing health insurers that provide subsidized coverage to low-income policyholders. That alone could send the health care law into a tailspin.
It's something Rice wants to avoid.
"My goal has always been to move us from Obamacare, which is patently unsustainable, into something that is sustainable," Rice said. "My preference would be not to instantly kill Obamacare and leave millions of people without health coverage. My preference would be to provide a meaningful transition from Obamacare to something that is more sustainable, a reasonable replacement."
Rice would have supported the appeal being dropped had House Speaker Paul Ryan's American Health Care Act passed last month. Now that it hasn't, Rice worries that a repeal without a replacement could leave 30 million uninsured.
Rice said he was not sure how likely the Trump administration was to use this option, but he expects the administration to be careful about offering alternatives to the Affordable Care Act. He argued that the law would eventually fall apart on its own, whether Trump's administration uses its option or not.
He disagreed with the conservative House Freedom Caucus' push for a full repeal of the law as Trump continues to argue with the group.
"The Freedom Caucus wants to repeal it and worry about replacement later. I would rather have in place a reasonable bypass to minimize disruption from the health care system," Rice said.
