Former Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Burwell on Friday praised a bipartisan deal to stabilize Obamacare’s markets that has yet to win support from President Trump and key GOP leaders.
“Their marketplace stabilization bill and the process through which it came together represents the way that we can get things done,” Burwell said Friday at American University’s law school on Friday. Burwell is president of American University and served as HHS secretary under former President Barack Obama.
The deal by Sens. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., and Patty Murray, D-Wash., would restore Obamacare insurer payments in exchange for certain reforms to the law. But while the deal has the support of 12 Republicans and likely all Democrats in the House, Trump’s opposition has stalled it.
Trump has said maintaining the insurer payments would act as an ongoing subsidy to the insurance companies, and has called for changes to the deal that include relief from Obamacare’s employer and individual mandates.
Trump’s opposition has led Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to say he won’t bring it up for a vote in its current form. But Senate Democrats have resisted changes, and say they already have the votes for it to pass in the Senate.
