STALEMATE AGAIN ON HEALTH CARE
Calls come for bipartisan package that would cover ‘most vulnerable people’
After GOP Senate leaders drop a health care overhaul bill, prospects for a bipartisan approach are still murky.
WASHINGTON — Senate Republicans decided Tuesday not to hold a vote on unwinding the Affordable Care Act, effectively preserving the landmark 2010 law for the foreseeable future.
Today is the deadline for insurers to sign contracts with the federal government so that they can sell health plans on the ACA marketplaces for 2018. Many companies are hiking these rates by double digits, but they have suggested they would curb such increases if they had assurances that the federal government would provide cost-sharing reduction payments for all of next year.
At the moment, the Trump administration is covering costsharing payments only on a month-to-month basis; a White House official confirmed Tuesday that it had made a payment for September. Asked whether the president intended to continue making payments going forward, the aide said officials have not yet decided what to do.
Republicans accepted the reality on Monday evening that the push had sputtered out.
The development amounted to a major setback for Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., and President Donald Trump, who spent the past week trying to rally support for a last-ditch attempt to fulfill a long-standing promise before a Senate rule that allows a simple-majority vote on the measure expires at the end of the month.
Speaking to reporters Tuesday, Trump said he was “disappointed in certain so-called Republicans” who would not back the Graham-Cassidy bill.
Republican leaders could call on Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., to revive negotiations with Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., on a bipartisan package to stabilize the current insurance marketplaces.
On Tuesday, Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., reiterated his party’s willingness to work with Republicans to fix the current health care law — if they abandoned their effort to undo it altogether.
Some congressional Republicans, such as Rep. Carlos Curbelo, R-Fla., who represents a swing district, echoed that call.
“I think the time for partisan health care reform has passed, and we should focus on a bipartisan package that provides some regulatory relief, especially on the employer mandate,” Curbelo told reporters, “and also guarantees [cost-sharing subsidies] for the most vulnerable people.”
Many Republicans, however, oppose legislation that would approve the subsidies without reforming the ACA insurance market. “If you mean by ‘fixing Obamacare’ just dishing more money out to insurance companies, then no,” Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn, R-Texas, told reporters Monday, referring to a nickname for the Affordable Care Act.
At the moment, neither party’s proposal to address the law’s current problems has enough votes to pass. Sen. Collins announced Monday that she would not back Graham-Cassidy - which would redistribute federal health-care funding across the country and sharply curb spending on Medicaid - moments after the release of a much-anticipated Congressional Budget Office analysis that forecast “millions” of Americans would lose coverage by 2026.
Two GOP senators - Rand Paul, Ky., and John McCain, Ariz. already had come out against the measure and were not swayed by a new draft that emerged Monday morning.
Republicans hold a 52-to-48 advantage in the Senate.