Sen. Alexander Issues Remarks on Bipartisan Health Care Hearings
"This committee, which is the
"The reason for these hearings is that unless
"There are a number of issues with the American health care system, but if your house is on fire, you want to put out the fire, and the fire in this case is the individual health insurance market. Both
"I am consulting with
"In these discussions, we are dealing with a small segment of the total health insurance market. Only about 6 percent of insured Americans buy their insurance in the individual market--only about 4 percent of insured Americans buy their insurance on the exchanges.
"But while these percentages are small, they represent large numbers of Americans including many of our most vulnerable Americans. We're talking about the roughly 18 million Americans in the individual market--about 11 million of them who buy their insurance on the Affordable Care Act exchanges. About 9 million of those 11 million Americans have Affordable Care Act subsidies, and unless we act, many of them may not have policies available to buy in 2018 because insurance companies will pull out of collapsing markets.
"Just as important, unless we act, costs could rise once again--even making health care unaffordable--for the additional 9 million Americans in the individual market who receive no government support--roughly 2 million of them who buy their health insurance on the Affordable Care Act exchanges but who don't qualify for a government subsidy and roughly 7 million who buy their insurance outside of the exchanges--this means they have no government help paying for their premiums, co-pays and deductibles.
"As we prepare for these discussions, I have also urged the president to temporarily continue the cost-sharing reduction payments through September so that
"Cost-sharing reduction subsidies reduce copays and deductibles and other out-of-pocket costs to help low income Americans who buy their health insurance on the exchanges that would be (those who make under 250 percent of Federal Poverty Level, roughly
"Without payment of these cost-sharing reductions, Americans will be hurt. Up to half of the states will likely have bare counties with zero insurance providers offering insurance on the exchanges, and insurance premiums will increase by roughly 20%, according to
"In my opinion, any solution that
"Now if the president were to approve continuation of cost-sharing subsidies for August and September, and if
"So if the president over the next two months and
"Now this is only step one in what we may want to do about health insurance and the larger question of health care costs. So we will proceed step-by-step. A subsequent step would be to try to find a way to create a long-term more robust individual insurance market, but for the short-term, our proposal is that by mid-September we will see if we can agree on a way to stabilize the individual insurance market to keep premiums down and make affordable insurance available to all Americans."
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