Sen. Collins Struggles to Undo Damage Caused By GOP Tax Bill Vote

WESTBROOK, Maine, March 21 -- The Maine Democratic Party issued the following news release:

Maine Senator Susan Collins is struggling to secure passage of legislation aimed at stabilizing the health care insurance market, and she appears to be willing to use a woman's right to make her own personal medical decisions as a bargaining chip.

Collins has included a provision in legislation she introduced to stabilize the market and hold down premiums that would effectively eliminate abortion coverage, even in private insurance plans. While her aim is to try to garner conservative support to pass her bill in the House, conservatives there have made it plain that, regardless of Collins' misguided offer, they have no real interest in shoring up the Affordable Care Act after voting to destabilize it late last year. In fact, conservative Republican Representative Tom Cole of Oklahoma, said, "Nobody in that room voted for Obamacare, so the idea you're going to vote for billions of dollars to stabilize a system you never supported in the first place -- pretty hard to choke down."

Katie Mae Simpson, the Executive Director of the Maine Democratic Party, issued the following statement:

"Despite knowing the dangers, Senator Collins voted to jeopardize the stability of the health insurance market so that she could give tax breaks to the wealthiest instead of prioritizing them for working-class Mainers -- and now she's shortsightedly trying to offer up a woman's right to make her own personal medical decisions as a bargaining chip to fix the damage she created.

"But, as someone who has been in the Senate for more than two decades, Senator Collins should recognize that Republicans -- by their own admission -- have no actual interest in shoring up the ACA and would rather see premiums spike than work to fix it. Throughout this fiasco, all Senator Collins has succeeded in doing is showing Maine people that she is willing to compromise on a woman's right to make decisions in a sad attempt to bail herself out.

"This is just another example of how Susan Collins isn't the deal-making pragmatist she claims to be. She shouldn't have put Maine people in this position to begin with, and Maine people shouldn't have to worry that we're going to pay the price for her bad judgment."

According to the Washington Post, Collins emerged from a meeting with Majority Leader Mitch McConnell earlier this week and cast blame on Democrats for the impasse because they objected to her provision. However, women's health care providers have objected to the provision in Collins' bill.

Meanwhile, Collins' office continues to push out press releases highlighting the need for her legislation, but fails to acknowledge that it was her vote for the GOP tax bill, which gutted the ACA, that made the legislation urgently necessary to begin with. That's why Collins originally said that Congress would pass stabilization bills before voting for the GOP tax bill, then changed the timeline to before the end of 2017, and has since changed the timeline again.

"The bottom line is that if Mainers see a spike in their health care premiums, Susan Collins will be to blame. If women see their ability to access health care coverage diminished, Susan Collins will be to blame," Simpson continued. "We will find out soon enough."

The language included in the legislation introduced by Senator Collins and Lamar Alexander (R-Tennessee) would expand restrictions put in place by the so-called Hyde Amendment which bars federal funds from being used on abortion. The language in Collins' bill would expand the Hyde Amendment by blocking cost-sharing reductions and reinsurance payments from going to plans that offer abortion coverage. If these payments are blocked from going towards these types of plans, private insurance companies may opt to no longer offer them.