After President Obama’s Affordable Care Act was enacted in 2010, Republicans at both the state and federal levels seemed to speak with one voice in flatly rejecting it.
But in subsequent years, though most Republican governors remained critical of the health care law, nine accepted a central but optional element, expanding Medicaid programs to cover many more low-income residents of their states. At least four others, urged on by hospitals and business groups, will try to do so this year.
And now, briefs filed last month in support of a major legal challenge to the law — King v. Burwell, which is now before the Supreme Court — are raising new questions about divisions within the Republican Party over the law.
Such filings, known as amicus briefs, allow interested parties to weigh in on either side of a case. Nearly two dozen briefs were filed on behalf of the plaintiffs in the King case, which the court will hear on March 4, but relatively few Republican state officials signed on.
The case focuses on the federal subsidies that help Americans buy insurance through marketplaces established under the law. The plaintiffs say the law’s wording allows subsidies only in states that created their own marketplaces. But the Obama administration argues that Congress intended to make the subsidies, which are considered crucial to helping millions enroll in coverage, available in all states, including those that rely on the federally run marketplace.
Six Republican state attorneys general — in Alabama, Georgia, Nebraska, Oklahoma, South Carolina and West Virginia — filed a brief agreeing that subsidies were illegal if distributed through the federal marketplace. “Those were the states that expressed an interest in joining,” said Aaron Cooper, a spokesman for Attorney General Scott Pruitt of Oklahoma, who led the effort.
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