McCaskill holds town hall

Aug. 17--WARRENSBURG -- Democrats made a mistake with Obamacare and Republicans did the same, Sen. Claire McCaskill said at her town hall meeting Thursday at the Warrensburg American Legion post.

"The good news is this is a moment when we can quit playing politics and come together in a bipartisan way to repair what we have," she said.

Democrats held hearings and accepted Republican amendments, but made the mistake of passing Obamacare without Republican votes, and Republicans tried to repeal Obamacare without hearings or Democrat votes.

"It was a recipe for disaster, because it's political," McCaskill told about 100 people in the hall. "Now that that's failed, take a deep breath and begin to realize that we could work together to fix some of the problems we have."

Dee Friel, Warrensburg, asked a multi-part question about health care. McCaskill's answers included the failed GOP House plan to replace Obamacare would have raised premiums in Johnson County by about "10 grand" per person, while reducing Medicaid payments to provide a tax cut for the wealthy. The GOP's Senate version would have cost "several thousand dollars" more per person, she said.

Some in Congress seek to stabilize markets so people who do not have workplace insurance still can receive affordable care, she said.

"If more people have insurance, then health care costs are going to come down," McCaskill said.

McCaskill gave the example of the alternative to requiring everyone to buy insurance: A young man who hears the government will no longer force him to get insurance uses that money to instead buy a motorcycle, gets cut off by a tractor-trailer, suffers brain damage, straps the hospital with unpaid bills, the hospital then charges insurers more money to cover the expense, and insurers pass on the higher cost to consumers.

The government requires drivers to have car insurance so why not health insurance, McCaskill asked.

"Some people say, 'Well, you don't have to drive a car.' Well, you do if you live in rural Missouri," she said.

Requiring health insurance mirrors requiring car insurance, she said: "You have to have the money to pay your bills."

After the town hall meeting, McCaskill said some Democrats support single-payer, universal health care, but she is not ready to embrace that "incredibly expensive" proposal.

"If you look at our debt and how it's going to grow, it would exponentially increase to the point where we wouldn't have any money," she said. "If the interest rate goes up, we would literally have no money in the federal budget to do things like veterans affairs, and things like public education, and things like infrastructure. ... We can't go there until we can do so responsibly."

President Trump has said Obamacare will die under its own weight, but McCaskill foresees death by sabotage.

"One of the reasons the premiums are going up is the uncertainty surrounding whether or not President Trump is going to pay the cost-sharing payments that are due to the insurance companies. ... Him sabotaging it is creating uncertainty and those insurance companies are factoring that uncertainty into their premium levels."

This week's Congressional Budget Office study stated premiums could increase 20 percent due to the uncertainty.

"That's why Republicans actually put those payments in their bill," McCaskill said. "I think we're going to have some success getting a bipartisan majority to at least stabilize those payments in the short run so that we can get through the next round of exchange offerings, with Missourians still having the choice that they can afford."

McCaskill said there is urgency to stabilize payments, with Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tennessee, indicated hearings will start after Congress returns to Washington.

"I have talked to and gotten reassurance from at least 10 to 12 Republicans that agree that this is something we need to do, and we need to do right away," she said.

___

(c)2017 The Daily Star-Journal (Warrensburg, Mo.)

Visit The Daily Star-Journal (Warrensburg, Mo.) at www.dailystarjournal.com

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.