3 Ariz. legislators pursuing health fix

Bipartisan group aims to steady insurance markets

After months battling over Republican-led health-care proposals, three Arizona members of Congress have joined a bipartisan group of lawmakers trying to shore up a portion of the nation’s insurance system.

A proposal released Monday by the 43-member Problem Solvers Caucus would effectively guarantee insurance subsidies for the individual markets and exempt more businesses from mandated health coverage.

U.S. Rep. Martha McSally helped craft the bipartisan plan for the Republicans as a way to help stabilize the individual markets, which face a deadline next month for setting premium levels even as President Donald Trump has suggested he may withhold subsidies to them.

The individual market is where those who don’t receive coverage from their employers or the government purchase plans from private companies. The cost is subsidized for people with lower incomes.

The plan combines elements of the GOP health-care plans in the House and Senate and preserves subsidies that Democrats say help stabilize the individual marketplace. The proposal would have the support of Democratic Reps.

Tom O’Halleran and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona.

Some Democrats and Republicans in the Senate have been working on their own plans for stabilizing the Affordable Care Act, popularly known as “Obamacare.” Still, it’s unclear whether those efforts will get traction as Republicans regroup following the dramatic collapse last week of their efforts to pass conservative health-care legislation.

Both Trump and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said in recent days that “bailouts for insurance companies” would not happen.

The House plan would quickly address concerns about the individual market. At the same time, it would require businesses with more than 500 employees to offer insurance, a boost from the current 50 workers. It would also count as full-time employees those working 40 hours or more, rather than 29.

“This isn’t about saving or completely killing Obamacare. This isn’t about fixing Obamacare. This is about addressing the things that are failing under Obamacare, which is the individual market and the impact on small businesses because of the employer mandate,” said McSally, who backed the GOP health bill that passed the House in May. “Time is running out for the 2018 markets to be finalized.”

“Our main goal is to stabilize what’s going on out there so everybody that’s affected by this is not waiting day to day for the next statement of whether they’re going to have health care,” O’Halleran said. “We need to send a very clear message out that people are working together in spite of what the American public is hearing.”

The Problem Solvers are roughly evenly divided between Democrats and Republicans, a mixture that closely mirrors the composition of Congress itself. Even so, the caucus has had limited success, largely because of the fierce partisanship that has gripped Washington across presidential administrations.

The individual marketplace for health insurance has had a checkered record. Arizona had eight insurers offering such coverage in 2014, according to an analysis by the Kaiser Family Foundation. Now, 14 of the state’s 15 counties have only one choice for individuals buying insurance on their own.

McSally’s work with the caucus puts her in a key role in trying to reshape health care after she was among a contingent of reputedly moderate Republicans who helped craft details of House Speaker Paul Ryan’s American Health Care Act.

That bill narrowly passed the House in a party-line vote in May after Ryan made several concessions to the farright House Freedom Caucus.

Even as the bill got more conservative, McSally remained a supporter of the AHCA, which the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimated would result in 23 million fewer people with health insurance over a decade than leaving in place the ACA.

O’Halleran and Sinema voted against the GOP plan.

McSally said she would expect the fix supported by the caucus would have a net positive effect on coverage and would cost roughly $200 billion, based on earlier estimates by the CBO.