Senators push ahead with healthcare fix
Bipartisan group of 24 signs on, but Trump noncommittal
WASHINGTON — Democrats pressed Thursday to advance a bipartisan bill that would preserve subsidies for low-income Americans under the Affordable Care Act amid a new show of cooperation, even as GOP leaders suggested that they would need greater concessions before bringing it up for a vote.
President Donald Trump, meanwhile, suggested that he was “open” to authorizing payments to insurers that help offset outof-pocket health costs in the short term — but had not given up his goal of repealing the ACA.
Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee Chairman Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., and the ranking Democratic member, Sen. Patty Murray of Washington, who authored the new health care package, said that they had 12 Republican and 12 Democratic co-sponsors for their measure. It would continue the cost-sharing reduction payments, known as CSRs, in exchange for giving states greater latitude to regulate health coverage.
Many conservative Republicans, including congressional leaders, have expressed skepticism about the prospect of passing legislation that would not roll back the ACA in a meaning- ful way. While the bill does make it easier for states to obtain federal waivers to change the way their markets operate and allows ACA consumers age 30 and older to buy catastrophic health plans, it preserves the law’s core mandates.
Speaking on the floor Wednesday, Alexander said those conservatives were ignoring the “chaos” that could ensue if the federal government did not provide the cost-sharing reduction payments that Trump cut off this month.
“What’s conservative about unaffordable premiums?” he asked.
Even as Alexander and Murray announced their sponsors — which included conservatives and liberals, as well as centrists from both parties — a top Republican argued that the plan had to undergo changes and win the clear support of Trump before it could succeed.
“It takes the president’s support, would be the first thing it would take,” said Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn, R-Texas. “I know they’ve got bipartisan cosponsors. Sen. Alexander is a very methodical, very thoughtful guy. He understands that there are going to need to be changes ... before (the bill is) going to get a critical mass of support.”
Trump called Alexander twice Wednesday, the senator said, and each time encouraged him to continue working on a deal.
The president told reporters Thursday that while he prefers providing federal health funding in a block grant to states, he is open to a different approach for a finite period.
“We will probably like a very short-term solution until we hit the block grants, until that all kicks in,” he said. “And if they can do something like that, I’m open to it, but I don’t want it to be at the expense of the people. I want to take care of our people; I don’t want to take care of our insurance companies.”
The president has repeatedly decried the idea of paying money to insurers, which is the way costsharing payments are distributed.
Sen. Lindsey Graham, RS.C., and Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., whose own ACA overhaul bill faltered late last month, signed on to the new bill and have been working along with Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., to broker a compromise that would address the concerns of the White House and House Republicans.
Murray said she was confident that Congress would ultimately pass the measure because Americans are beginning to grasp that the impasse in Washington has translated into higher insurance rates for 2018.