Susan Collins Moves The Goalposts (Again) On Her Health Care Demands
By ALICE OLLSTEIN Published JANUARY 4, 2018 4:31 PM
When Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) first announced she would support the GOP tax bill that killed Obamacare’s individual mandate, she insisted that three separate health care measures to prop up the Affordable Care Act and protect Medicare recipients be passed before she cast her vote. She then amended her demand, saying the bills had to pass before the tax bill came back from the House-Senate conference committee. She then insisted—after voting for the tax bill—that the policies pass by the end of 2017. When it became clear that wasn’t possible in the face of staunch opposition from House conservatives, she expressed confidence they would become law in January. Now, Collins is moving the goalposts yet again.
In an interview with Inside Health Policy published Thursday, Collins said she hopes the policies she proposed will pass and be implemented before 2019, when the repeal of the individual mandate is expected to shrink the individual insurance market by several million people and drive up premiums by at least 10 percent.
“When the mandate is repealed in 2019, we must have other health care reforms in place in order to prevent further increases in the cost of health insurance,” Collins’ office said in a statement. “Senator Collins believes that averting these price spikes, particularly for low-income families, should be a goal that members of both parties can embrace.”
One of the bills—dubbed Alexander-Murray after its bipartisan Senate authors—would restore government subsidies to insurance companies, known as cost sharing reduction (CSR) payments, that the Trump administration cut off earlier this year. The other would send states $500 million in 2018 to set up a reinsurance or high-risk pool program, and then $5 billion a year for 2019 and 2020.
But it remains in dispute whether the two policies have any hope of passing Congress this year—considering prominent House members have characterized them as “welfare” and a “bailout” for insurance companies—or whether they would actually make in difference in stabilizing the health care market and lowering premiums.
On the first, the ship may have sailed.
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