Indiana senators: Health care bill needs input from both sides

South Bend Tribune (IN)

June 20--As a select group of Republican senators craft a national health care bill behind closed doors, both of Indiana's senators have called for bipartisan input on a measure that has sparked intense debate.

It will draw more attention Wednesday, as health insurance companies face a deadline to file next year's rates with Indiana regulators.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has a led a 13-member GOP group working on the bill in secret. Indiana's freshman senator, Todd Young, is one of the 39 Republican senators who will see the bill for the first time Wednesday at a GOP senate caucus meeting, NBC News reported. Republican leaders hope to bring it for a vote by the whole Senate next week.

Young attempted to reach across the aisle last month when he sent a letter to Democratic senators.

"If we are going to achieve lasting results, we're going to need to reach bipartisan conclusions," Young wrote in the letter.

While noting his belief that Obamacare is "broken and unsustainable," Young wrote that he hoped Democrats would share what parts of the law they think are working, as well as what needs to be repealed or adjusted.

"I firmly believe the best solution possible can be reached by working together," Young wrote at the end of the letter. "As this debate advances, give me a call; I would be happy to grab a cup of coffee and hear your thoughts and ideas."

Young, a member of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions committee, has been working on issues related to funding levels for Medicaid, the state and federally funded health insurance program for the poor. Indiana's Medicaid expansion, called HIP 2.0 and launched under former Gov. Mike Pence, has added more than 400,000 Hoosiers to health insurance rolls, requiring them to pay part of their premiums.

Young has called the program "essential." The House bill to repeal Obamacare, passed last month, calls for Medicaid cuts, and Democrats fear even deeper ones in the Senate version.

While he has reached out to Democrats, Young has said nothing publicly to indicate he's prepared to vote against his party's health care bill. He also is not one of the five moderate Senate Republicans that Democrats hope they can convince to vote against it.

Senate Democrats, powerless to stop the bill if it wins support from all 52 Republicans, plan to do what they can to delay the vote, an effort that began with a six-hour "talkathon" Monday night on the Senate floor.

In a statement released Monday, Sen. Joe Donnelly, D-Ind., criticized Republican leaders for the closed-door process.

"Indiana and our country would be better off if we could work together to produce bipartisan legislation rather than a partisan bill drafted in secret and voted on without input or a single senate hearing," Donnelly said.

Donnelly also took aim at the Trump administration, saying its strategy of letting Obamacare "explode" instead of fixing its problems is hurting Hoosiers.

"If your house needs repairs, you don't set the house on fire. You work to fix the issues," Donnelly said during a 10-minute Senate speech on Monday afternoon. "If we're serious about improving the health care system in this country, we can do it, and we can do it working together. But the first step is to do no harm, to stop doing damage to the current system and to the people who rely on it. Health care is not a game...This is about people's health, economic security and real lives."

As an example, Donnelly pointed to the fact that insurers don't know how to plan because Trump continues to threaten to withhold $7 billion in annual cost sharing reduction, or CSR, payments that lower consumers' deductibles and co-pays. Insurance companies offering individual health plans in Indiana had until today to file their projected rate increases for next year with the Indiana Department of Insurance.

Pamela Morris, president and CEO of CareSource, a Dayton, Ohio-based health insurer that sells individual plans on the Indiana marketplace, says her company had been projecting rate increases of about 2.2 percent next year but that rates could jump at least 15 percent if the CSR payments stop.

"In addition, we believe that ceasing CSR payments may adversely impact the risk pool (i.e. rising rates may lead healthier consumers who can't afford the premium increases to drop out of the market, which results in a sicker pool remaining in the market), potentially leading to further increases in future years," Morris wrote in a letter to Donnelly.

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