Sen. Lamar Alexander on health care fix: ‘Put out the fire’
Alexander, chairman of the
The goal is coming up with a short-term solution so that "Americans will be able to buy insurance at affordable prices in 2018,"
"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," Alexander added. "Both
Angry over the
The money is paid to health insurers to make coverage more affordable for low-income individuals and families.
"Without payment of these cost-sharing reductions, Americans will be hurt," Alexander said.
Murray, who just last month blasted Alexander and
"With Trumpcare rejected in the
In his remarks to the committee, Alexander said if Trump over the next two months and
Because most insurers have priced their 2018 rates at two different levels -- one with and the other without the federal cost-sharing -- Alexander said "it's important not only that the president approve temporary cost-sharing for August and September, but that we in a bipartisan way find a way to approve it at least for one year so we can keep premiums down."
That's only the first step "in what we may want to do about health insurance and the larger question of health care costs," Alexander said. "So we will proceed step-by-step."
Another step, Alexander said, 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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