Senate Democrats and Republicans took turns blaming each other on Tuesday for the failure of Congress to lower premiums on Obamacare’s insurance marketplaces.
A bipartisan effort to keep premiums low collapsed in March over abortion funding, and lawmakers behind that effort sparred in a Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee hearing on healthcare costs.
“I was deeply disappointed that Republican leaders blocked our bipartisan legislation,” said Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., the panel’s top Democrat. “In addition to resuming that bipartisan work to address rising healthcare premiums, we can work to find common ground on other challenges that they face.”
Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., responded that he has a “little different view” on how the two initially bipartisan bills went down.
“Democrats pulled the rug out from under us at the last minute,” he said.
Alexander referred to a disagreement over whether new funding in the bill should comply with the Hyde amendment, a spending rider that forbids federal funding from covering abortion.
The bill would have provided funding for two years for reinsurance programs to help prop up Obamacare insurers and made cost-sharing reduction insurer payments that President Trump had halted.
Republicans tried to add the two bills to the spending deal that passed in March, but Murray objected to adding it because of a disagreement over the Hyde language.
“It was very unfortunately that the raking member whom I had great respect chose to block those bills,” said Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, at the hearing.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell agreed to bring up the stabilization bills for a vote in exchange for Collins’ vote for tax reform, amid other concessions. Tax reform repealed the individual mandate that everyone get health insurance starting in 2019, a move that insurers say will cause premiums to rise as younger people will leave the marketplaces.
“If there has been a change of heart on [the bills] then I would certainly welcome that,” Collins said.
