Bids to curb health costs going nowhere
Democrats, GOP increase demands, threatening effort
WASHINGTON — It started as a bipartisan attempt to curb soaring health care premiums.
But Congress’ effort to stabilize the nation’s insurance markets is faltering amid escalating demands by each party and erratic positions by President Donald Trump. Democrats want bigger federal subsidies for consumers under President Barack Obama’s health care law while Republicans, still fighting that statute, aim to relax its coverage requirements and win abortion restrictions.
The bickering could collapse the whole effort, with each side blaming the other when next year’s expected higher insurance rates are announced — just weeks before Election Day, on Nov. 6. Last week, Sen. Patty Murray of Washington, a lead Democratic negotiator, called GOP demands on abortion limitations “a complete nonstarter.”
A spokeswoman for Rep. Ryan Costello, R-Pa., sponsor of the House GOP package, said if Democrats want to oppose the effort “by playing abortion politics, then shame on them.”
Some Democrats think they’d reap political gains if the talks collapse since polls show the health care statute is widely popular and the public would largely fault Republicans if consumer costs spiral skyward.
“Either Republicans help stabilize the market or they own these premium and deductible increases,” said Rep. Kurt Schrader, D-Ore. “And I’d be glad to help crucify them if they don’t want to do something very reasonable.”
The effort forces Republicans to choose between trying to avert bad news about premiums shortly before elections or standing by their opposition to anything that could be viewed as propping up Obamacare.
Trump hasn’t clarified things for his party. In a single day last October, he bounced from praising one bipartisan plan as “a very good solution” to labeling it “bailouts to insurance companies.”
Signs indicate insurance prices will likely continue upward.
Without federal action, premiums are expected to rise in every state by up to 32 percent next year and by a cumulative 90 percent or more through 2021, according to a report released last week by Covered California, the state agency overseeing California’s health care exchange.
Ominously for the GOP, the study found that 14 of the 17 states that risk potentially “catastrophic” threeyear rate increases of 90 percent or more backed Trump in the 2016 elections.
To try containing those increases, lawmakers crafted two bipartisan bills last year.
One by Sens. Susan Collins, R-Maine, and Bill Nelson, D-Fla., would provide billions to states for reinsurance.
The funds would help insurers afford covering some of the sickest, costliest customers.
Another by Murray and Sen. Lamar Alexander, RTenn., would revive federal payments to carriers to subsidize discounts they give lower-earning consumers for costs like deductibles and copayments.
Trump halted the subsidies in October as part of his effort to upend Obama’s law after federal courts said Congress hadn’t properly approved the money.