Sens. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) and Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.) defended opposing approaches for how Congress should address Obamacare subsidies, a sign of the considerable daylight between the two parties as the credits are set to expire at the end of the year.
Cassidy — the chair of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee — advocated for an ambitious plan to put money into employer-sponsored accounts that would let individuals set aside pre-tax dollars for medical expenses.
“It’s a sweet spot: lower premiums, help with the deductible, making the patient the informed consumer,” Cassidy told CBS’ Margaret Brennan in a Friday interview that aired on “Face the Nation” on Sunday. “The president and I are united. We should all be united about that.”
Trump appeared to endorse the plan in a social media post last weekend recommending “that the Hundreds of Billions of Dollars currently being sent to money sucking Insurance Companies in order to save the bad Healthcare provided by ObamaCare, BE SENT DIRECTLY TO THE PEOPLE.”
Shaheen said she had “heard from health insurance companies that implementing significant changes in the first year is going to be really difficult to do” but added that she agrees with Cassidy that Democrats and Republicans should attempt to reach a bipartisan deal.
“We can extend the credits, but we probably can’t implement significant reforms that Senator Cassidy was talking about in the time frame that we’ve got,” she told Brennan on Sunday. “So we need to look both in the short-term and in the long-term for how we address the cost of health care.”
Shaheen — who helped broker the deal to reopen the federal government in exchange for a vote on extending the subsidies — is playing a role in health care negotiations with Republicans. She said Democrats and Republicans “ought to be able to agree on some changes,” including a Republican proposal to lower the income cap that determines eligibility for the credits.
While she signaled a willingness to negotiate with Republicans over changes to Obamacare, Shaheen said Congress must act with urgency to extend the subsidies to prevent millions of Americans from seeing their premiums increase as soon as January if the credits expire.
Senate Republicans remain divided over whether to pursue Cassidy’s plan or an alternative proposal endorsed by Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) to extend the subsidies for a year and then implement larger changes the following year.
Still, Cassidy projected optimism about their ability to reach a consensus on the overhaul in the month before a vote planned for the second week of December.
“I think we can figure that out about as easily as we can figure out what we would do if we just did a straight-out extension,” he said of the plan.
