RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:
And let's move back to the presidential campaign. Mitt Romney has been criticized for being on many sides of many issues, but there's one where he's been pretty consistent: He wants to repeal the federal health care law. The question is: Can Romney actually keep that promise?
Here's NPR's Julie Rovner.
JULIE ROVNER, BYLINE: You can barely listen to Mitt Romney make a speech or give an interview without hearing some variation of this vow...
(SOUNDBITE OF SPEECH)
MITT ROMNEY: On day one of my administration, I'll direct the secretary of Health and Human Services to grant a waiver from Obamacare to all 50 states. And then I'll go about getting it repealed.
ROVNER: But there are two big questions in there. First of all, could a President Romney actually stop the health law in its tracks? And if he did try, what would happen?
First, it turns out that stopping the law may be harder than the law's opponents realize. For one thing, Romney can't just grant waivers letting states ignore the law.
TOM MILLER: There are waivers under the law, but not an across-the-board waiver.
ROVNER: That's Tom Miller, from the conservative American Enterprise Institute. For the record, Miller is an avid opponent of the health law. But he's also a veteran of Capitol Hill and knows what can and can't happen.
MILLER: You can try anything under the law. A federal court will usually step in and say, no, you've gone a little bit too far.
ROVNER: In this case, the part of the law that allows the president to grant states waivers doesn't actually kick in until 2017. Courts would likely block a lot of things Romney might try to do unilaterally, like simply cut off funding or tell his staff to stop enforcing it.
Bob Laszewski is a health industry consultant, and also not one of the law's big fans.
BOB LASZEWSKI: Sure, he can rewrite the regulations, for example, but fundamentally, he can't change the law.
ROVNER: And even rewriting regulations would take months, at best, which brings us to the repeal part of Governor Romney's promise. If Republicans gain control of Congress, they plan to use a fast-track procedure called budget reconciliation to repeal major chunks of the measure. That's because budget reconciliation can't be filibustered and needs only 51 Senate votes rather than the usual 60.
But there are a couple of problems with that, says Laszewski. One is even that's more time-consuming than many people realize.
LASZEWSKI: Budget reconciliation rules require them to have a budget resolution, and require them to be able to vote out the changes, and that timetable is going take him to at least mid-year.
ROVNER: Indeed, since 1980, Congress has passed 19 budget reconciliation bills. The one that moved fastest got signed into law May 28th, 2003. Meanwhile, the health law will still be in effect, and the clock will still be counting down. So even as Congress may be working to undo the law, he says, states will still face deadlines to put important features in place, like expanding their Medicaid programs.
LASZEWSKI: Every state legislature's got a decision to make about whether they bill the insurance exchange or not. Everyone has sort of treaded water until the election, and then we're go or no go. Well, if Romney's elected, it's like we don't know what's going to go or not. And it's just going to be one hell of a mess.
Laszewski, remember, has never been a supporter of the health law. And there's still another complication. It turns out that not all of the law can be undone using the budget process. So Congress could end up taking out all the budget-related items, like subsidies to help people buy insurance, while leaving intact things like the requirement for insurance companies to cover people with preexisting conditions. Since that would attract mostly sick people to sign up, it could make a huge mess of the private insurance markets, Laszewski says.
And we're playing with gasoline, here. This is one-sixth of the economy, and one-sixth of the economy is sitting on the ledge here wanting to know which way we're going to go.
ROVNER: Now, Tom Miller of the AEI agrees that key parts of the health care sector have been doing a lot of waiting around for the election, and that given the short timelines, chaos is likely next year, no matter who wins.
MILLER: If you implement it in its entirety, you'll also cause chaos in the market, would be my rejoinder. We're going to have chaos in either case.
ROVNER: But the law has already put a lot of changes in place. So taking it apart - particularly given the potential legal and legislative difficulties - will be no easy task.
Julie Rovner, NPR News, Washington. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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