Republicans, Democrats have calm, bipartisan discussions on health care.
WASHINGTON — Republicans and Democrats serenely discussed ways to curb premium increases for individual insurance policies on 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, flouting 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 afford to cover customers with serious, costly medical conditions.
Disagreements remain, including over Republican demands 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 try casting 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 constituents’ coverage.
“I think we did a pretty good job today of not blaming each other,” panel Chairman Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., said.
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 buy policies who don’t get coverage at work or from the government. Insurance commissioners from five states testified Wednesday, and five governors were slated to appear Thursday.
Alexander said he wants to produce a bipartisan bill by the end of next week. 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.
“Threading this needle won’t be easy,” Murray said during the hearing. She later told reporters she was “very hopeful” the two sides could reach agreement on a measure.
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 “non-functional” and said lawmakers should let those customers join more efficient group plans. He called federal payments to insurers “a scam.”
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. Trump’s effort is “petty and it’s going to hurt millions of people.”
Alexander has proposed providing the payments to insurers for a year, though Democrats want it extended two years or more. Alexander suggested flexibility, saying, “We can discuss what that time is.”