Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., said Tuesday he is working with the White House as well as House and Senate lawmakers to make changes to a bipartisan Obamacare stabilization bill.
Both President Trump and House Republicans are opposed to a Senate bill that would fund Obamacare insurer payments for two years in exchange for flexibility to states to waive the law’s insurance regulations. Johnson said Tuesday that bill wouldn’t mean much if it all it could do is pass the Senate.
“I am trying to show we can actually pass this in the House,” he said Tuesday during a meeting with the Washington Examiner editorial board. “It doesn’t do a whole lot of good to pass this in the Senate.”
Johnson has been working on his own reforms to add to the bill, which was announced last week with 24 Republican and Democratic sponsors. Some reforms Johnson wants to add to the bill include relief from the law’s individual and employer mandates, an expansion of the duration of short-term plans from 90 to 364 days, and expanded use of health savings accounts.
While the deal already has 60 votes, Trump has labeled resumption of the insurer payments called cost-sharing reduction payments as bailouts to Obamacare insurers.
Johnson said Trump’s demands to get his support for the deal mirror the proposals the senator has outlined. But he said the insurance companies get paid either way, even if the cost-sharing payments are not made.
Insurers are required to lower copays and deductibles for low-income enrollees on Obamacare’s exchanges on the individual market and the cost-sharing reduction payments reimburse them. Without those payments, insurers will still have to lower out-of-pocket costs for low-income customers and will likely raise premiums to recoup the costs. A major rise in premiums, which some analyses peg at nearly 20 percent, would lead to more taxpayer money going towards tax credits since they rise with any premium hikes.
“I think the higher hurdle is overcoming that rhetoric and getting conservatives in the House to fund CSRs in exchange for reasonable reforms,” Johnson said.
But Johnson added that he is getting resistance from Democrats to any of his reforms. Democratic leadership in the Senate have called for Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., to bring the bill up to the floor for a vote because it has 60 votes.
“The problem is they have that bipartisan agreement now,” Johnson said. “They will cling to that until we can show them an alternative.”
