Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Senate conservatives look at curbing Obamacare protections
WASHINGTON — Conservative senators are pushing to diminish insurance coverage requirements imposed by President Barack Obama’s health care law as Senate Republicans try fashioning legislation overhauling the nation’s health care system.
Their ideas include erasing Obama consumer protections, such as barring higher premiums for people with pre-existing medical conditions, but allowing states to opt into them.
That’s a more conservative twist on the health care bill the House narrowly approved last week. That measure retains the coverage protections but lets states get waivers to drop some of them.
Conservatives are also talking about curbing health care tax credits Republicans want to provide and slowing the growth of the Medicaid program for poor and disabled people.
Obama’s insurance requirements are among the most popular aspects of his 2010 law, and conservatives’ chances of annulling them in whatever bill GOP senators produce are uncertain. They’re getting pushback from more centrist Republicans, and their proposals may not even be allowed into the measure because of special rules the Senate is using.
“We’re going to leave it up to consumers to decide what they want to buy, what they need, so we’re going to eliminate mandates, not add them,” No. 2 Senate GOP leader John Cornyn, R-Texas, told reporters Thursday, referring to Obama’s coverage requirements. But he added, “We haven’t made any decisions.”
Conservative Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, would like to eliminate Obama’s requirement that insurers offer coverage to people with pre-existing conditions and charge them the same premiums they charge healthy customers, a GOP aide said.
Lee would also like to erase Obama’s mandate that insurers cover a range of services such as maternity care and prescriptions, and the limitation that insurers charge older customers a maximum of three times more what they charge younger ones.
Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, also wants to curb Obama’s coverage requirements, which he said are “the prime drivers of premiums skyrocketing.”
A working group of 13 senators — which Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., has now opened up to all 52 Senate Republicans — is meeting twice weekly to discuss the bill.