Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., who helped her party come to an agreement on a bipartisan bill to stabilize Obamacare, slammed Republicans on Wednesday for their recent decision to repeal the law’s provision that obligates Americans to have health insurance or otherwise pay a fine.
Republicans have decided to repeal the penalties for the provision, known as the individual mandate, as part of their tax overhaul bill, and have also said they would later take up a bipartisan effort on healthcare known as Alexander-Murray. The move was “nothing more than political cover,” Murray said in a hearing of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, of which she is the top-ranking Democrat.
“First — let’s be clear about the policy: Tacking Alexander-Murray onto the partisan Republican tax reform effort is like trying to put out a fire with penicillin. It will not do anything to help,” she said.
Democrats have been working this year to halt Republican efforts to repeal Obamacare. After Republican efforts failed this summer, the Alexander-Murray bill agreement was reached between Murray and Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., chairman of the HELP Committee. It would fund insurer payments known as cost-sharing reduction subsidies and allow states more flexibility on how they implement the law. President Trump has asked that the bill do more to repeal portions of Obamacare, and the House does not support it.
Alexander-Murray has been billed as a stabilization effort because it could lower premiums in 2019 for Obamacare customers, who make up about 6 percent of the U.S. population, as most Americans get medical coverage through a job or government program such as Medicare.
Repeal of the individual mandate penalty would result in 13 million more people becoming uninsured in a decade and would save the government $338 billion, according to estimates from the Congressional Budget Office. Republicans have criticized the projections as inaccurate, and CBO is reviewing its analysis. If the analysis shows a lower number of uninsured people, however, then the savings also would be lower. Republicans have said they want to pass their tax bill by Thanksgiving, and a new analysis won’t be ready by then.
Murray did not say whether she would direct other Democrats to oppose Alexander-Murray if Republicans pass the repeal of the individual mandate penalties. She instead lamented the partisan path Republicans had taken.
“The way that this was done, by sneaking devastating healthcare changes into a partisan bill at the last minute, is completely counter to the bipartisan spirit in which we worked on our stabilization bill,” she said. “Many of us agreed in the wake of partisan repeal efforts earlier this year that jamming partisan policy through before anyone has a chance to see it is absolutely not the right way to get things done, and it’s especially disappointing to see this happen because in working on our bill and reaching agreement, we proved we can work under regular order and find common ground.”
Alexander responded to Murray by saying that the tax bill was dealt with in the Senate Finance Committee, and not by the HELP Committee.
“It’s in a different bill in a different committee,” he said. “It’s in the tax reform bill … it’ll be considered separately and must be considered separately.”
He also noted that the tax bill was still in committee and that amendments could be proposed when it hits the floor, and that CBO shows over time that the exchanges would stabilize with Alexander-Murray if it were to pass.
Murray retorted that their bipartisan discussions did not include how they would tackle handling potential repeal of the individual mandate penalty.
“We did not have hearings, we did not have input, we did not have any discussion about what the marketplace would look like if the individual mandate was repealed,” she said.
