No insurance choice? McCaskill wants you to be able to buy from exchange used by Congress

St. Louis Post-Dispatch (MO)

May 19--WASHINGTON -- Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., has introduced legislation that would allow Americans who live in counties without insurance choices under Obamacare to sign up for coverage through the same Washington, D-C.-based exchanges used by members of Congress and their staffs.

McCaskill told reporters it was a bipartisan attempt to fix the Affordable Care Act, but not replace it. She said she hoped Republicans signed onto the legislation, and she blamed the Trump administration for trying to undermine the current law to make a case to repeal and replace it.

Republicans, including her counterpart, Sen. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., have said the ACA -- known as "Obamacare" -- is already failing. Blunt cites the fact that a majority of Missouri's counties -- most of them in rural areas of the state -- are down to one insurance provider in the exchange markets as evidence of a need to replace it with something else. Republicans have also pointed to entire states, like Iowa, being on the verge of having no companies offering insurance in the exchanges.

So far, no counties in Missouri are in that predicament. But McCaskill said that the Trump administration, by talking down the law and threatening to withhold funds designed to help stabilize exchange markets under Obamacare, is responsible for its bad condition. Her bill is preventative in case some counties are shut out of the exchange market altogether by the withdrawal of private insurers, she said.

"There could be some counties in Missouri and other states that could end up without an insurer," McCaskill said. "The reason this is happening is the administration is frankly undermining a lot of the architecture of the Affordable Care Act as it relates to cost-sharing rates that are supposed to be paid to insurance companies to stabilize these markets."

The legislative prospects of McCaskill's legislation are long, given that Republicans control the Senate, and they have established a task force of 13 males senators to come up with the Senate version of a House-passed bill that has been heavily criticized, including by even some Republican senators.

But McCaskill said her bill could be part of a bipartisan effort to improve the current law when, as she predicts, Republican senators realize they can't pass a repeal and replace bill, and instead will try to fix Obamacare.

"I believe that we will get to the point... that no matter what we call it we will be repairing what we have now," McCaskill said. "And I think this piece of legislation will have a very comfortable spot in any repair legislation because all of us want these exchanges to be successful. We want people to have a place to buy insurance."

McCaskill said she buys her own insurance from a provider in St. Louis County so that she understood what Missourians were going though under Obamacare. But, she said, members of her staff are covered through the Washington. DC. exchange that was set up for all members and their staffs, no matter the state they represented.

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