A top Senate Democrat on Thursday blocked Republicans from adding an amendment to the massive spending bill that would fund Obamacare insurer payments, because of language restricting federal money for abortions.
Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, one of the leaders of the healthcare bill, asked for unanimous consent to add the provision to the spending bill, but Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., objected.
Murray, the top Democrat on the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, said she wanted to work with Republicans on measures that would stabilize the law so that people would have lower premiums, saying a consensus had been reached months ago.
“Senate Republicans opted instead to surprise Democrats with a new, last-minute proposal that included poison pills that Republicans knew Democrats would never agree to,” Murray said.
She lamented the inclusion of the Hyde Amendment to the new funding under the bill. The amendment, a spending rider added to appropriations bills since 1976, prohibits federal funding from covering abortions.
The bill, Murray said, “would make it so that women would not even be able to buy their own healthcare coverage that covers abortion.”
Despite her objections, she said she was not giving up on passing a bill on Obamacare. “We are frustratingly close to an agreement and I do hope we can get there,” she said.
Murray released her own amendment that would provide reinsurance and dedicate $105 million to Obamacare outreach efforts for 2019 through 2021. The Trump administration slashed outreach funding for the 2018 open enrollment period by 90 percent to $10 million.
Murray’s amendment also would give states more flexibility to waive Obamacare insurer regulations and would fund the cost-sharing reduction payments.
The amendment would prohibit the expansion of short-term plans, which the Trump administration is trying to do. A short-term plan does not have to follow Obamacare’s quality requirements such as covering essential health benefits or not charging people with pre-existing conditions more money.
The administration wants to expand the duration of the plans from 90 days to nearly 12 months. The Obamacare legislation Collins and Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., introduced would have codified regulations for longer short-term plans.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., on the floor accused Democrats of “talking the talk” on healthcare but not “walking the walk.”
He praised Collins for working across the aisle.
“Efforts are being blocked precisely when they stand the greatest chance of helping millions of Americans,” he said.
Alexander has worked with Murray on the legislation since the summer, a time he calls the most “frustrating time in my 16 years in the Senate.”
The legislation would give states $30 billion over three years to create reinsurance programs, which cover the highest claims from insurers, leading to lower premiums overall. It also would fund cost-sharing reduction payments to insurers for three years and give states more flexibility to waive Obamacare regulations.
The cost-sharing reduction payments reimburse insurers for a requirement under Obamacare to lower out-of-pocket costs for low-income enrollees. The legislation had bipartisan support, but it collapsed over disagreements on abortion restrictions.
Democrats want the new funding to have the same protections as in Obamacare, which lets states opt out of forcing insurers to cover abortion.
But Republicans want the funding to apply to the Hyde Amendment. Under this approach, a state would have to get federal permission to let insurers cover abortions.
Democrats and advocates are worried that applying Hyde language would spur insurers to drop abortion coverage altogether to ensure they get reinsurance funding. Republicans sponsoring the stabilization package haven’t been open to a compromise on the Hyde language.
“My understanding is that the Hyde Amendment was a compromise that has lived from 1976 until now and that Democrats regularly vote for bills that have Hyde protections,” Rep. Ryan Costello, R-Pa., who co-sponsored the House version, said Wednesday.
“You basically are asking Republicans to compromise off a pre-existing compromise.”
Costello added that he doubts the package could get Republican support if it doesn’t have Hyde protections.
Both sides claim the other doesn’t actually want to stabilize Obamacare.
Republicans say the Hyde language isn’t the real problem.
“That is not the issue here in my book,” Rep. Greg Walden, R-Ore., chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, said Thursday. “The issue is that Democrats want to blame us for higher insurance rates in the fall elections.”
Democrats counter that Republicans never wanted to stabilize the law that they sought to repeal multiple times, but didn’t want to look like they aren’t acting on high prices. So Republicans sought to include a poison pill in the legislation to ensure that it would repel Democrats and kill support for the stabilization bill.
