WASHINGTON, D.C. — Legislation to help people pay for health care through the Affordable Care Act collapsed in the U.S. Senate along party lines Thursday, dimming hopes of a compromise before the end of the year.
Enhanced tax credits under the ACA, the law known as Obamacare, are set to expire Jan. 1. Obamacare enrollees, who number about 47,000 in Wyoming and 24 million nationwide, are facing steep rate hikes.
The Republican-controlled Senate voted on two ACA bills Thursday, including Democrats’ proposed three-year extension of the enhanced credits.
Republicans, who allowed a vote on that bill as part of last month’s deal to end the federal government shutdown, defeated the measure.
“Obamacare has failed so badly that Democrats continue to use taxpayer dollars to try to hide the failures,” Senate Majority Whip John Barrasso of Wyoming, the chamber’s second-ranking Republican, said in floor remarks Thursday ahead of the vote.
He pegged the cost of the Democrats’ bill at $83 billion.
GOP Alternative
Before the GOP voted down the tax credit extension bill, Democrats blocked counter legislation put forward by Republicans to establish health savings accounts (HSAs) for some Obamacare enrollees.
Under the bill, sponsored by GOP Sens. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana and Mike Crapo of Idaho, enrollees would have been eligible for either $1,000 or $1,500 each per year — depending on age — in a new HSA.
Democrats said those amounts were too small and eligibility was too strict, applying only to people with certain Obamacare plans but not others. They also complained of strings attached to the money.
“How ridiculous, how stingy, how mean and cruel to the American people,” Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer of New York said Thursday on the floor about the GOP bill.
Republicans hold a 53-47 edge in the Senate, but 60 votes were needed to advance either bill, allowing Democrats to halt the GOP measure with the filibuster.
Republicans said their bill would have lowered premiums by 11% and given patients, rather than insurance companies, control of the HSA money.
In the House, there are several ACA-related bills but no floor votes had been held as of Thursday.
U.S. Rep. Harriet Hageman, R-Wyoming, did not reply to Cowboy State Daily inquiries on whether she supports any particular legislation in that chamber.
Barrasso Bashes ACA
Thursday’s votes brought to a head the health care debate raging for weeks on the Senate floor.
The Cassidy-Crapo bill, however, was unveiled just a few days ago.
Mostly Republicans, including Barrasso, have been blasting the ACA, calling Obamacare a failed system increasingly propped up by taxpayers, enriching insurance companies and lacking safeguards against fraud.
Barrasso, a physician, said the ACA has also limited patients’ choice of doctors.
“Obamacare robbed the American people of choice as well as affordability,” he said Thursday. “When patients have more freedom and more choices, health care improves. When patients have more freedom and more choices, costs go down.”
The ACA was enacted into law in 2010 without a single Republican vote. Democrats held 60 seats in the Senate at the time, preventing a Republican filibuster.
The soon-to-expire enhanced ACA tax credits established in 2021, “are juicy subsidies, extra subsidies, on top of the regular Obamacare subsidies,” Barrasso said.
“Obamacare’s unaffordable. The tax and spend radicals who run the Democrat Party want to extend the subsidies,” Barrasso said.
Schumer questioned whether Republicans actually wanted to pass the Cassidy-Crapo bill or brought it forward just for posturing.
Republicans accused Democrats of the same thing, since the tax credit extension bill had no realistic chance of passage.
If a bipartisan compromise is not reached and the issue still has traction next year, both parties have plenty of fodder for the midterm elections thanks to Thursday’s votes.
Lummis: No ‘Blank Check’ To Insurers
Obamacare “has done immense damage to health care in our country,” Sen. Cynthia Lummis, R-Wyoming, said in a statement Thursday.
“I support the Cassidy-Crapo bill because we can’t continue the same old policies that got us into this mess that is resulting in increased premiums for folks across Wyoming,” she said.
“The Democrats’ plan is a blank check to insurance companies,” she added. "Republicans want to empower patients, lower premiums, and put competition back into the marketplace.”
Lummis spokesman Joe Jackson noted that Lummis, when she served in the U.S. House, voted against the ACA. Barrasso was in the Senate at the time, opposing the landmark law.
Compromise Elusive
Senate Democrats’ bill to extend the enhanced tax credits did not propose structural changes to the ACA.
But some lawmakers in both parties — and in both chambers — have spoken of a compromise such as extending the credits while enacting reforms to the law.
In the Senate, Barrasso’s counterpart on the other side of the aisle, Minority Whip Dick Durbin of Illinois, said Wednesday he wished for such a compromise. But after hearing Barrasso speak that day, Durbin said he had little hope.
In response to Cowboy State Daily inquiries about the chance for a bipartisan compromise, Barrasso spokeswoman Laura Mengelkamp referred to Barrasso’s comments Thursday morning in a Fox News interview.
Asked point blank in that interview about the chance of a deal before Dec. 31, Barrasso said: “Senators are working together to talk about ways to actually lower the cost of care, not make insurance companies more profitable and just send money to insurance companies.”
Barrasso then pivoted from health insurance prices to the broader issue of “affordability” and the cost of living overall.
“Affordability is is a major issue in this country,” he said.
He told Fox News he planned to meet with President Donald Trump later in the day. He said Trump is “focused on affordability in all ways, in terms of gas, in terms of groceries, in terms of electricity, heating and housing.
“Republicans are focused on putting more money in to people’s pockets.”
Sean Barry can be reached at sean@cowboystatedaily.com.
