Centrist House Democrats on Wednesday announced they would be pushing for a healthcare plan to shore up Obamacare, only hours after the House’s liberal Democrats pushed for a fully government-financed healthcare system.
The centrist Democrats, a 101-member group which calls itself the New Democrat Coalition, hope to revive a bipartisan measure that failed in the Senate. The plan, an approach favored by the healthcare industry, would funnel billions of government dollars toward Obamacare in order to lower premiums for more patients.
The press conference came just hours after 107 House Democrats re-introduced the Medicare for All Act, a bill that would extend Medicare to cover more medical services than it does now, and that would cover nearly every person living in the U.S. A spokeswoman for the New Democrat Coalition denied that the event’s timing was intended to coincide with that of the Medicare for All Caucus and said its plans to hold the conference had been on the books for two weeks.
The centrist Democrats said they were open to possible other changes to the healthcare system down the road, such as allowing people to buy into Medicare at a younger age or letting people buy Medicaid instead of a private health insurance plan. They stressed the party should hold hearings on each but framed their approach as more pragmatic, saying the priority was to find healthcare solutions that could be enacted quickly.
“Universal healthcare is in their future in one form or another,” Rep. Kurt Schrader, D-Ore., one of the group’s co-chairs, said in a press conference Wednesday. “Every member is committed to that.”
The New Democrat Coalition sent a letter to House leaders Wednesday outlining its proposals. They would include a reinsurance fund, which funnels government dollars to the sickest patients to help reduce the costs of premiums for everyone else who buys coverage. Another part of the plan would reinstate billions of dollars in payments President Trump ended in 2017 that help low-income people with Obamacare plans pay for out-of-pocket medical expenses. They proposed letting states enact auto-enrollment, which would take away the need for patients to actively enroll in coverage every year.
“We think we can drive the caucus agenda because we are open to working with Republicans … There is an urgency to addressing this issue,” said Rep. Ami Bera, D-Calif.
The plan is similar to an Obamacare stabilization package known as Alexander-Murray that failed in the Senate. At the time, Democrats objected because the bill contained anti-abortion language that would have prevented the funds from going toward plans that pay for abortions. Democrats at the press conference Wednesday were unable to say how they would work around that impasse.
“In my opinion, that was a bogus red herring … The former speaker raised that because he was not interested in us accomplishing anything at the end of the day,” Schrader said.
Obamacare does not contain the Hyde Amendment that says federal funding cannot go to abortions except in the cases of rape, incest, or if a woman’s pregnancy is life-threatening. Obama signed an executive order reaffirming that federal funding for abortion was banned. Some states, including California, mandate that all health insurers must cover abortions.
