GOP, Dem senators calmly discuss bolstering Obama health law

Associated Press

WASHINGTON

Republicans and Democrats serenely discussed ways to curb premium increases for individual insurance policies Wednesday at a Senate hearing that veered away from years of fierce partisanship over the failed GOP effort to revoke President Barack Obama’s health care law.

Senators and state insurance commissioners from both parties embraced the idea of continuing billions in federal subsidies to insurers for reducing out-of-pocket expenses for millions of people, flouting President Donald Trump’s oft-repeated threats to halt those payments.

There were even bipartisan words of support for proposals to provide money to states to help insurance companies afford to cover customers with serious, costly medical conditions.

Disagreements remain, including over Republican demands to also make it easier for insurers to sell policies that might offer skimpier coverage than Obama’s statute allows.

But if nothing else, the Senate health committee hearing underscored both sides’ willingness to try casting aside hostility from the GOP drive to repeal Obama’s 2010 law and seek a modest pact that would instead bolster that statute by protecting the affordability of constituents’ coverage.

“I think we did a pretty good job today of not blaming each other,” panel Chairman Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., said afterward.

The harmony came at the first of four health committee hearings on how to shore up the individual insurance marketplace, where about 18 million people buy policies who don’t get coverage at work or from the government.

Insurance commissioners from five states testified Wednesday, and five governors were slated to appear today.

Alexander said he wants to produce a bipartisan bill by the end of next week.

By late September, insurers must decide whether to sell policies in the government’s Healthcare.gov online exchanges in 2018. Alexander and top panel Democrat Patty Murray of Wash- ington state hope to produce a bill before that deadline to ease companies’ anxieties.