In rancor-free hearing, parties talk Obamacare
Hearing in Senate veers from years of fierce partisanship.
Senate Republicans, Democrats calmly discuss ways to continue subsidies, cut premium increases.
Republicans and Democrats serenely discussed ways to curb premium increases for individual insurance policies Wednesday at a Senate hearing that veered away from years of fierce partisanship over the failed GOP effort to revoke President Barack Obama’s health care law.
Senators and state insurance commissioners from both parties embraced the idea of continuing billions in federal subsidies to insurers for reducing out-of-pocket expenses for millions of people, despite President Donald Trump’s oft-repeated threats to halt those payments. There were even bipartisan words of support for proposals to provide money to states to help insurance companies cover customers with costly medical conditions.
Disagreements remain, including over a Republican proposal to also make it easier for insurers to sell policies that might offer skimpier coverage than Obama’s statute allows. But if nothing else, the Senate health committee hearing underscored both sides’ willingness to cast aside hostility from the GOP drive to repeal Obama’s 2010 law and seek a modest pact that would instead bolster that statute by protecting the affordability of coverage.
“I think we did a pretty good job today of not blaming each other,” panel Chairman Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., said afterward.
The harmony came at the first of four health committee hearings on how to shore up the individual insurance marketplace, where about 18 million people who don’t get coverage at work or from the government buy policies.
By late September, insurers must decide whether to sell policies in the government’s Healthcare.gov online exchanges in 2018. Alexander and top panel Democrat Patty Murray of Washington state hope to produce a bill before that deadline to ease companies’ anxieties.
While the hearing’s prevailing mood was harmonious, some comments underscored party differences.
Conservative Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., said the individual insurance market is “nonfunctional” and that lawmakers should let those customers join more efficient group plans.
Liberal Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., said Trump is trying to “sabotage” health care by threatening to end the payments to insurers and slashing money for federal attempts to persuade people to buy policies.