A trio of bipartisan governors are urging Congress to pass two bills to stabilize Obamacare’s insurance markets.
Republican John Kasich of Ohio, Colorado Democrat John Hickenlooper and Alaska’s Bill Walker, an independent, pushed for the two bills during a press conference Friday at the National Press Club outlining a new bipartisan health proposal. The plea comes as senators are hoping to insert the two bills into a long-term spending bill next month.
Kasich said he would like to restore cost-sharing reduction payments to Obamacare insurers, which Trump cut off in the fall. The bill from Sens. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., and Patty Murray, D-Wash., would restore the payments for two years in exchange for more state flexibility. The bill was released in the fall.
“They can’t seem to get this done,” Kasich said, referring to Congress. “It is all politics.”
Obamacare insurers are required under the law to lower out-of-pocket costs for low-income customers, and the CSRs reimburse them. Without the payments, Obamacare insurers raised premiums overall this year to recoup the costs.
The governors also pointed to another avenue called reinsurance to stabilize Obamacare’s marketplaces, which are on the individual market used by people who don’t have insurance through work or the government.
Sens. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., and Susan Collins, R-Maine, have sponsored a bill to give $10 billion over two years to states to set up a reinsurance program, which covers the highest claims for an Obamacare insurer that in turn lowers premiums overall.
Walker pointed to his own state’s effort to create its own reinsurance program. The state received a federal waiver to set up the program for 2018.
“Reinsurance has brought the cost of our healthcare down by 20 percent,” Walker said.
Hickenlooper said his state also might pursue a reinsurance program.
“We governors love to steal from each other and we will follow their lead and try to do it the same way they did,” he said.
Senators pushing the bills want to add them to a long-term spending bill that congressional leaders want to pass before the government runs out of money March 23. While the bills have enough support to pass the Senate, the House has been a major stumbling block.
The bipartisan proposal mirrors a similar proposal that was released last year and coincides with the winter meeting of the National Governors Association this weekend in Washington.
The governors said a major goal of the proposal is to improve healthcare affordability by reorienting the healthcare system to paying providers based on the quality of care versus the quantity.
They called for more flexibility to use Medicaid and state employee benefits to make changes, a movement that is already happening.
“With the support of the federal government, states are resetting the basic rules of healthcare competition to pay providers based on the quality, not the quantity of care they give patients,” the proposal said.
Governors also pressed for greater transparency in healthcare prices, an issue that several members of Congress hope to pursue with legislation this year.
“People ought to know what they are paying for,” Kasich said.
Kasich also suggested an idea to help bring down drug prices: letting states exclude drug makers from their formularies if the company doesn’t negotiate to lower prices. A formulary is the list of products that a government-run health program such as Medicaid will cover.
“What we want with Ohio is leverage,” Kasich said. “We want to be able to keep them off the formulary.”
