There is bipartisan agreement in Congress that doing something to help people faced with surprise medical bills and unsurprising massive prescription drug costs would be a great thing—and not just for their reelection prospects, but an actual good thing for actual people. But we can't have nice things anymore, and that's because of the for-profit healthcare industry and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.
In a letter to House Democrats outlining priorities for the year, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi put both high on that list. In fact, in the next few weeks a bipartisan group of House members is going to try to find a solution for surprise billing, or patients getting bills for care they thought was covered but turned out to not be when the provider or facility were not in their insurance network. Because someone is going to have to be on the hook for covering those costs if the patient isn't, it's created a massive fight between doctors and hospitals on one side and insurers and employers on the other. And Congress is caught in between.
As Texas Democratic Rep. Lloyd Doggett told Politico, the "agreement is that something should be done about each of those issues, but there is great debate about what it is." He adds that this year "is probably more campaign speeches than serious bipartisan policymaking." Serious bipartisan policymaking means wins for everyone, and that's where the election comes in. McConnell will not let Pelosi and any Democrats have a win on anything, and his stubbornness extends to one of his own longtime Republican colleagues in the Senate who is retiring this year.
"I'm going to do everything I can to keep surprise medical billing on the front burner between now and May," Senate Health Committee chairman Lamar Alexander told Politico. "It's a bill almost everyone wants passed, except a handful of people and the private equity firms that benefit from it." McConnell is among that handful of people. And if he's against this effort, he's even more against doing something about drug costs.
There's a current bipartisan Senate bill, negotiated between Democrat Ron Wyden and Republican Chuck Grassley, that McConnell is refusing to allow to move simply because it fines pharmaceutical companies who hike prices up beyond the rate of inflation. That's pretty much the minimum price constraint that could be put on drug companies, and it's too much for Mitch.
Politico gives the last word to the nation's one-time biggest Medicare fraudster, Sen. Rick Scott of Florida, who says they just can't move forward on these reforms because “It's so polarizing. […] I think people, because it's so polarizing, are scared to do anything. And they don't have to right now. There's no pressure up here."
There needs to be pressure up there—lots of pressure. And it needs to come from us.
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