THEY GOT NOTHING : The Clock Is Ticking And Republicans Still Have No Serious Obamacare Alternative....Obamacare has 17 million new insured

Posted: 05/10/2015 8:23 pm EDT Updated: 05/10/2015 8:59 pm EDT

Republicans keep saying they’ll be ready to act if the Supreme Court upholds the big legal challenge to Obamacare, thereby wiping out financial assistance for millions of people in two-thirds of the states.

With the clock ticking down to a ruling, it’s gotten awfully hard to take the GOP’s vows seriously.

Most experts expect the court to rule on King v. Burwell, as the case is known, on or around June 29, which is the last official day of its term. A victory for the plaintiffs would cut off tax credits that residents in Florida, Texas and 32 other states now use to pay for health insurance they obtain through Healthcare.gov, the federally operated marketplace.

Paul Ryan

Those tax credits are worth hundreds, sometimes thousands of dollars a year. They are the equivalent of a discount on insurance premiums and, without them, most of the people now receiving the credits would no longer be able to pay for their health insurance.

The ranks of the uninsured would swell by more than 8 million, according to an estimate by the Urban Institute. The loss of so many customers would likely force insurance companies to raise premiums and withdraw altogether from some markets, affecting even those customers buying directly from insurers rather than through Obamacare's marketplaces. more