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The White House is apparently not ready to let Trumpcare die, bringing in Republican governors and this week's most worthless Senate hacks, Republicans Dean Heller (NV), Lindsey Graham (SC), and Bill Cassidy (LA) to try to keep repeal alive. The rest of the Senate? They're moving on.
In what could be seen as a not so subtle rebuke of both Trump for his sabotage threats and Majority Leader Mitch McConnell for his subversion of Senate norms and traditions in trying to ram through repeal, a powerful committee chairman is actually following regular order to do something to fix the Affordable Care Act.
Senator Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, the influential chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, announced that his panel would begin work in early September on legislation to “stabilize and strengthen the individual health insurance market” for 2018. He publicly urged Mr. Trump to continue making payments to health insurance companies to reimburse them for reducing the out-of-pocket medical expenses of low-income people.
In the House, two Republicans, Representatives Tom Reed of New York and Charlie Dent of Pennsylvania, teamed with Democrats to promote incremental health legislation that would also fund the cost-sharing subsidies.
This comes as state officials from Idaho to California are seeing large rate increase announcements from insurers who are attempted to hedge their bets, and price premiums to compensate for what could be a loss of the CSR payments. Those increases in Idaho average 38 percent, and state officials lay the blame on Trump and Congress because of the uncertainty. Covered California's director, Peter V. Lee sees the possibility of 25 percent rate hikes for the silver plans in his state, and possible departures by companies from the market, saying that the CSR "policy allowed health plans to stay in the market when they might have left otherwise."
It would appear that even some Republicans have come to the realization that, with Obamacare alive and kicking, they're the ones who will be held responsible for making it work or not. Whether or not they can convince the dunderhead in the Oval Office (and his minions) of that remains to be seen, but it's progress.