Take a bipartisan approach to treat what ails Obamacare
After last Friday’s dramatic Senate rejection of the Republican health care plan, the question now is what Congress and the White House should do next.
Should they work to undermine the Affordable Care Act and try to scare up one more vote in the Senate for a Republican-only plan?
Or should the parties work together on measures that would preserve the fundamentals of the ACA, also known as Obamacare, but mend what ails it?
The answer should be obvious. As New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu, president of the U.S. Conference of Mayors, told the Editorial Board on Tuesday, “If there’s a part of the (law) that’s not working, go fix the part that’s not working.” Make the process bipartisan, he added, and “you ought to have a couple of mayors and a couple of governors involved.”
That makes far more sense than continuing the effort to repeal Obamacare and replace it with something — anything — drafted in secret by Republicans in Washington that can be rammed through both chambers and signed by President Trump.
The health law is not collapsing, as opponents claim. But it is fraying. Some counties are down to zero or one companies participating in the exchanges for purchasing insurance in the individual market.
The good news is that there is already some action toward a bipartisan approach.
In the Senate, Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., and Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., announced plans on Tuesday to work on legislation in their health committee to stabilize the individual insurance market.
In the House, centrist Democrats have unveiled a plan to shore up the exchanges. And a group of more than 40 lawmakers in the Problem Solvers Caucus, supported by the bipartisan reform group No Labels, put forth a proposal to repair, rather than re- peal, the health law.
Among other things, the plan would continue payments to insurers to help offset the cost of enrolling high-cost patients — payments that the Trump administration has threatened to end in a cynical effort to sabotage Obamacare.
This is a good starting point and could be enhanced with some Republican ideas, such as revising the mandate that employers provide coverage and doing more to encourage cross-state sales of health insurance.
The fact that some Democrats are willing to admit not all is hunky-dory with the ACA is a significant development. Perhaps a little candor on the Democratic side would be reciprocated by Republicans.
For all its faults, the ACA has been the most successful health care program since the creation of Medicare in 1966, adding more than 20 million people to the ranks of the insured, including many with pre-existing medical conditions. The simple fact is, no Republican alternative just over the horizon would work better. In fact, much of the ACA was blatantly stolen from a Republican plan of the 1990s.
For all the sloganeering on both sides, working together to improve the Affordable Care Act might just turn out to be the best politics.