After months of uncertainty, Mississippians and all Americans should know soon what Congress is going to do next year about health care.
Insurance companies have until Sept. 27 to decide whether they will participate in the Obamacare exchanges in 2018. Congress comes into session Sept. 5 and so it will have a short deadline to decide what to do. The Republican leadership can either try to bolster the current law to get more insurers on board or begin dismantling it.
There are two factions competing for influence, as laid out in a Wall Street Journal story this week.
First, Republican Senator Lamar Alexander of Tennessee and Democratic Sen. Patty Murry of Washington State are pushing a bi-partisan plan to preserve billions in federal subsidies for insurance companies. Insurers say they need that cash to participate in the Obamacare marketplace.
In Marion County and much of the rest of Mississippi, the number of insurance companies providing coverage on the marketplace dropped from three to two from 2016 to 2017. That’s a sign that things aren’t going well. A report from the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office says stopping those subsidies would increase premiums 20 percent.
Second, Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina is championing an approach that gives federal money to states to create their own health care plans. It would end the requirement that everyone carry health insurance or pay a penalty, which essentially kills Obamacare, which was built on that principle.
Both seem like potentially viable alternatives for health care that deserve consideration from Republicans and Democrats. That’s important for the success of whatever plan is approved.
One of the reasons Obamacare has been resisted since its inception seven years ago is that it was enacted without a single Republican vote. A similar political and public resistance would have occurred had the Republicans gotten their way and replaced it without a single Democratic vote.
The truth is, neither party has come up with the correct solution yet to this complex problem of providing health care to most Americans without bankrupting the government.
Obamacare is too expensive, too complicated and too cumbersome for insurers and medical providers. The alternatives that the Republicans have presented so far, though, would throw too many millions back onto the rolls of the uninsured and possibly cripple health care in rural communities such as ours.
A middle ground is needed, and that’s where bipartisanship must come into play. So far there has been little progress, but maybe the looming deadline will prompt real action from Congress.
