Key senator to hold hearings on stabilizing insurance market after GOP health care bill falters
WASHINGTON — With the GOP’s plan to repeal Obamacare near collapse, the Republican chairman of the Senate health committee announced Tuesday he will convene hearings to look for ways to stabilize the individual insurance market.
Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., said the hearings are needed to help millions of Americans who will be unable to buy insurance unless Congress acts.
“My main concern is doing all I can to help the 350,000 Tennesseans and 18 million Americans in the individual market who may literally have no options to purchase health insurance in 2018 and 2019,” said Alexander, who chairs the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., indicated he plans to hold a vote on a bill to repeal the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare, without replacing it, even though he lacks the votes to pass the legislation.
However that vote turns out, “the Senate health committee has a responsibility during the next few weeks to hold hearings to continue exploring how to stabilize the individual market," Alexander said. "I will consult with Senate leadership and then I will set those hearings after the Senate votes on the health care bill.”
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Alexander’s decision to call for hearings came just hours after three Republicans – Sens. Susan Collins of Maine, Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska — said they would not support a GOP plan to repeal Obamacare without a replacement.
Their defections appeared to doom the GOP plan, leaving McConnell short of the 50 votes he needed to pass the bill.
McConnell proposed the idea late Monday when it became clear that he did not have enough GOP votes to pass the latest Senate version of a replacement bill for Obamacare.
The GOP bill was pieced together behind closed doors by a small group of Republican senators, with no input from Democrats and no public hearings.