The Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee scheduled four days of hearings on shoring up the country’s health care system. Titled “Stabilizing Premiums and Helping Individuals in the Individual Insurance Market for 2018,” the hearings were held on September 6, 7, 12. The committee heard testimony testimony from State insurance commissioners, governors, health care experts, and insurance companies.

The hearings marked the first time that Democratic and Republican senators have met together to look for ways to stabilize the health care system under Obamacare. The top Republican and the top Democrat on the committee each issued statements affirming their intention to work together for solutions.

Committee Chair Lamar Alexander (TN-R) said,

“While there are a number of issues with the American health care system, if your house is on fire, you want to put out the fire, and in this case it is the individual health insurance market.”

The committee’s Ranking Minority Member, Senator Patty Murray (WA-D), said,

It is clearer than ever that the path to continue making health care work better for patients and families isn’t through partisanship or backroom deals. It is through working across the aisle, transparency, and coming together to find common ground where we can.
Problems that need to be resolved include the hike in insurance premiums for 2018 and the uncertainty as to whether the Trump Administration will continue to pay the cost-sharing subsidies that go to insurers to reduce deductibles and co-pays for lower-income Obamacare enrollees. Insurers, governors, and insurance commissioners are pressuring the President to guarantee that the payments will be made through 2018 in order to stabilize the market.

The hearings follow the Senate Republicans’ failed attempt earlier in the summer to repeal and replace major portions of the Affordable Care Act, which effectively doomed the chances for enactment of a comprehensive health care system overhaul.

Meanwhile, on the House side, a bipartisan group of 40 Members, called the Problem Solvers Caucus has endorsed an outline of fixes to Obamacare.

Also, a bipartisan group of governors, led by Ohio’s Republican Governor John Kasich and Colorado’s Democratic Governor John Hickenlooper, has submittted a health care proposal to congressional leaders, urging them to move quickly to stabilize the individual insurance market and promote participation in the Federal exchanges.

For background on this topic, see the March 2016 issue of Congressional Digest titled, “Obamacare Update.”