Pirate's Cove

Romney has said that “What the Court did not do on its last day in session, I will do on my first day if elected President of the United States. And that is I will act to repeal Obamacare.” Obviously, that doesn’t mean he will abolish it by executive order, as many liberals, including the article over at the Politico, thinks. What that means is that he wants the Republican Congress, provided the GOP takeover the Senate and hold the House, to pass legislation to repeal this horrific and un-American legislation, and replace it with common sense ideas. As the Politico article points out, there are methods Romney can use even without legislation to gum up the works

1. Break the federal exchanges – Under the law, the federal government is supposed to build health insurance exchanges for states that don’t create their own.

But with Romney’s help, those states could defeat that effort, too, even if the law remains unchanged.

A quirk in the language of the law — which the law’s supporters call a “drafting error” — could allow Romney to make it basically impossible for federally run exchanges to function. That’s because the law doesn’t explicitly give federal exchanges the ability to provide the same insurance subsidies that it will give to state-run exchanges.

Obama’s Internal Revenue Service issued rules intended to eliminate this problem, but Romney’s IRS could reverse that interpretation of the law.

Then you get

2. Starve the federal exchanges –

Romney and the GOP could make sure that the Federal exchanges never see any more money, because the Democrats who wrote and passed Obamacare forgot to offer a means to fund them. Oops!

3. Withdraw rules – A new administration can’t just change existing rules that its predecessors have gotten into final form. That requires a full rulemaking process, and they have to prove they have a “rational” reason for the change.

Actually, Politico made a mistake here, because the Affordable Care Act gave enormous latitude and power to the director of HHS to create the rules. The phrase “the director of HHS shall/may” is scattered throughout the bill, allow said director to determine what the rules shall be. A Romney appointed director can change it all. Which Politico points out in the next bullet point

4. Be very ‘flexible’ – The secretary of HHS is in charge of ultimately certifying whether states are enforcing provisions of the law or whether the federal government needs to use its backup enforcement powers.

That means that a Romney HHS secretary could let states and employers get away with things an Obama secretary likely wouldn’t. That could include certifying state-based exchanges that don’t meet many of the law’s requirements, or giving broader latitude to companies that don’t want to update their insurance plans to meet the letter of the law.

Finally, we get to

5. Do nothing – He could stop the writing of the remaining rules to implement the law, stop Medicare from moving ahead with programs to find new ways to pay providers, stop the IRS from enforcing the individual mandate and even stop Medicaid officials from facilitating the expansion of the program in the states that want it.

So, a President Romney would have options to gum up the works with Obamacare even without full control of Congress by the Republican party. Expect massive teeth gnashing and Moonbat Level 10 from liberals.

Crossed at Right Wing News and Stop The ACLU.