Rep. Mike Pompeo: Extending Obamacare subsidies is wrong approach

In the coming week, the U.S. Supreme Court is expected to issue its opinion in King v. Burwell. It may rule that President Obama has been acting illegally in providing taxpayer dollars to subsidize health care plans for more than 6 million Americans, including many thousands in Kansas, sending the cost of their health insurance skyrocketing.

Many of those most impacted will be people who can least afford it. This is not a problem created by the Supreme Court. No, this is the outcome directed by progressive leaders who sought to nationalize America’s health care system.

Such a ruling would make abundantly clear what many have known for more than five years now – Obamacare does not work for hardworking Kansans.

The president will likely suggest a one-sentence change to the law – he will tell the American people that Obamacare can be fixed with just the tiniest edit. Kansans know that a 2,000-page failed takeover of one-sixth of America’s economy cannot be fixed by changing a single phrase.

While those who wrote and passed this legislation are firmly to blame for this catastrophic health insurance outcome, this ruling will provide Congress and the administration the opportunity to finally repeal this terrible law and replace it with a market-based policy that will lower costs, expand access and increase choices for patients. We must create a system that truly allows Kansans to keep their doctors and choose their own health insurance plans.

Unfortunately, some in the Republican Party are eager to push for an extension of Obamacare subsidies. This would permanently enshrine Obamacare into our health care system. It is the wrong approach. Instead, we need a framework that will allow all Americans access to affordable health care, not an extension of a law that is destroying our health care system.

Congressional Republicans have been working on alternative plans for the past five years. There are viable options ready to be presented, and we must do so. What we should not do is pass the buck to the next president and Congress by extending these subsidies and the taxes that go with them.

We must not return to the broken pre-Obamacare health care system either. Rather, we should seize this moment to end government-centered health care, address the crisis in Medicaid and Medicare it has created, and find a better way for those who will be left without subsidies.

In 2011, Kansans sent me to Washington, D.C., with the clear directive to repeal this damaging and burdensome legislation. In fact, my first vote as a congressman was to repeal Obamacare. Since that time, Kansans – patients and doctors, parents and health care workers – have continued to share their stories of how detrimental Obamacare has been to them or their business.

A Supreme Court ruling that acknowledges the unlawfulness of these federal subsidies will mark the beginning of the changes we desperately need so that Americans have access to quality, affordable health care.

I plan on keeping my promise to end this law. I hope my colleagues will do the same. A favorable ruling will provide us that opportunity.

This story was originally published June 20, 2015 at 7:02 PM with the headline "Rep. Mike Pompeo: Extending Obamacare subsidies is wrong approach."