“If my side is unable to agree on an adequate replacement, then some kind of action with regard to the private health insurance market must occur,” McConnell said on July 6, the Associated Press reported. “No action is not an alternative,” he said. “We’ve got the insurance markets imploding all over the country.”

This week, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York had a response: Let’s do it.

In a letter Monday cosigned by his leadership team, the New York Democrat told McConnell he appreciated his remarks and called on him to focus on “immediately advancing policies to provide stability and certainty to the health insurance markets.”

In addition to more cost-sharing funds and reinsurance, the Democrats proposed allowing Americans with no options on their local exchange to buy insurance from the District of Columbia marketplace, and phasing out the “subsidy cliff” so people earning just above 400 percent of the federal poverty level don’t lose the entire subsidy.

Out-of-State Purchase

Some Republican senators began pushing fall-back options earlier this year when the House Republican health-care bill appeared to be dead.

Alexander, the health committee chairman, and fellow Tennessee Senator Bob Corker have proposed keeping Obamacare but allowing Americans without insurance options in the individual market to use their subsidy to buy a state-approved policy outside their exchange.

“If things continue to unravel and there’s no solution in sight, I would hope that it would be taken up, and I think there’s a likelihood that it would pass,” Corker said in April. “It would solve a lot of problems for people across the country.”

Another problem governors are confronting is that federal matching funds for states that accepted Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion are set to automatically wind down from 95 percent in 2017 to 90 percent in 2020. That’s a problem for states that have expanded Medicaid, and Cassidy said it may “force a deal” on a fix.

“Louisiana is on the hook for $300 million every year. Ten percent of a big number is a big number,” Cassidy said. “States can’t afford all this money.”