GOP takes “small step,” works with Democrats

Almost eight months after President Donald Trump took office and promised to repeal Obamacare immediately, Republican senators are instead developing a small package of changes to help the health law rather than end it.

Sen. Lamar Alexander, the Tennessee Republican taking the lead on some of the efforts, said he wants an Obamacare package to include money for insurers to defray low-income Americans’ health costs, as well as flexibility for states to decide how they cover their citizens under the law.

“This hearing is about taking one small step, a small step on a big issue, which has been locked in partisan stalemate for seven years,” Alexander said Wednesday at a hearing by the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions committee, of which he is chairman.

The new, more modest plan is a sharp change of direction after Republicans’ efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act failed this summer. In another shift, GOP and Democratic lawmakers have pledged to work together on the changes and appeared during the hearing to be prepared to iron out differences. Alexander said members of both parties will have to agree to proposals they might not be comfortable with.

“Democrats will have to agree to something — more flexibility for states — that some are reluctant to support. And Republicans will have to agree to something — additional funding through the Affordable Care Act — that some are reluctant to support,” he said.

Alexander said his hope is to pass a bill by the end of the month. The Senate just returned from its summer break and is convening a series of hearings on the Affordable Care Act.

Sen. Susan Collins, the Maine Republican who was one of three votes against repealing Obamacare in July, dooming the GOP effort, called the hearings — which Republicans declined to hold during their repeal effort — a promising first step.

“They will help us come up with a solution to help further stabilize the markets and correct a few, not all, but a few of the flaws in the ACA,” Collins said Tuesday.

It’s likely, said Collins, that some of those efforts could be combined into a single bill to get it through both chambers.