Republican and Democratic senators worked together and agreed on a plan they hope will stabilize America’s health insurance markets, which have been in limbo following GOP failures to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act. President Donald Trump
Media: Fox5
With a bipartisan list of 24 co-sponsors, evenly split between Republicans and Democrats, Sens. Patty Murray, D-Wash., and Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., on Thursday built Senate support for a plan that would preserve for two years “Obamacare” subsidies for low-income ratepayers.
President Trump has both embraced the plan and called it a sop to health insurers, but seemed to be coming on board. The president announced last week that he was halting federal subsidies that allow insurers to offer lower rates to low-income Americans.
The Alexander-Murray plan is designed to last for two years, stabilize insurance markets and protect families from soaring insurance premiums, Murray said in a Senate floor speech.
The gyrations of Trump have revealed just how little the 45th president knows about health care legislation. “He’s for the bill one day and against it the next,” quipped Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer of New York.
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Alexander was turning the other cheek. “I appreciate the president’s encouragement to create a short-term bipartisan solution and his willingness to consider it,” said the chairman of the Senate Health Education Labor Pensions Committee.
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Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., accompanied by Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., left, and Senate Minority Leader Sen. Chuck Schumer of N.Y., right, speaks to reporters on Capitol Hill in Washington, Tuesday, Oct. 17, 2017, after she and Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., say they have the “basic outlines” of a bipartisan deal to resume payments to health insurers that President Donald Trump has blocked. less
Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., accompanied by Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., left, and Senate Minority Leader Sen. Chuck Schumer of N.Y., right, speaks to reporters on Capitol Hill in Washington, Tuesday, Oct. 17, … more
Photo: Andrew Harnik, AP
Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., left, accompanied by Sen. Mike Rounds, R-S.D., right, speaks to reporters on Capitol Hill in Washington, Tuesday, Oct. 17, 2017, after he and Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., say they have the “basic outlines” of a bipartisan deal to resume payments to health insurers that President Donald Trump has blocked. less
Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., left, accompanied by Sen. Mike Rounds, R-S.D., right, speaks to reporters on Capitol Hill in Washington, Tuesday, Oct. 17, 2017, after he and Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., say they … more
Photo: Andrew Harnik, AP
With 12 Republican co-sponsors plus support form all 48 Democrats, the Alexander-Murray plan has majority Senate support. Its GOP backers range from moderate Sens. Susan Collins, R-Maine, and Lisa Murkowwski, R-Alaska, to very conservative Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa.
Still, with House leaders looking to compromise, Trump must be brought and kept on board. He has actually mentioned Murray’s name, but Washington’s senior senator remains a trenchant critic of Trump’s efforts to “sabotage” the Obama administration’s signature achievement.
Instead, the heavy lifting is being done by Sen. Lindsay Graham, R-S.C. He is co-sponsor of legislation that would dismantle the Affordable Care Act and replace it with block grants to the states. Of course, states would have less money with which to cover Medicaid patients and tackle such challenges as the opioid crisis.
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Trump has latched onto block grants. In a Politico interview, Graham said he talked with the president and heard Trump say: “I want a deal. I want to get something for this money.”
Given the failure to repeal Obamacare and his administration’s sparse legislative record, Trump may need to relearn the art of the deal.
As peddled by Graham, the president was told: “You can’t save Obamacare but you can keep the markets from collapsing until we get a replacement.”
The deal would quiet one corner of a capital perpetually in crisis and help millions of Americans.
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Murray has been in on rare occasions when Congress has functioned in recent years. She and Alexander repaired the failing Bush-era No Child Left Behind program. She and Paul Ryan worked out a 2013 budget agreement that prevented shutdown of the federal government.
While doing the Obamacare deal, Murray was also on the front lines Thursday, fighting a Trump order that makes it easier for employers to deny (on “religious” or “moral” grounds) contraception coverage to their women employees.
Article source: http://www.seattlepi.com/local/politics/article/Connelly-Bipartisan-Senate-backing-for-12292048.php