Healthcare
Floor Speech
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Ms. CANTWELL. Do I have consent to ask my colleague a question?
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Ms. CANTWELL. Will my colleague yield for a question?
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Ms. CANTWELL. Thank you.
I noticed in your proposal that you are talking about something that you had hoped to effect January of next year. Is that correct?
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Ms. CANTWELL. What is the Senator from Louisiana's interpretation of how the market controls the--you are trying to create a market mechanism where you are giving the consumer the same amount of money you would give them in the tax credits to make the insurance more affordable, only through a health savings account. But how do you know, once you have that in a health savings account, the market is going to not still have an increase above that amount? So how do you think this affects the market?
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Ms. CANTWELL. Well, if the Senator would yield for another question. I am assuming that you think affordability is the key. I certainly think affordability is the key. Nobody wants to subsidize expensive health insurance. We want to create market mechanisms to drive down the costs of health insurance, not just spend money to buy expensive insurance, whether you buy it through the tax credit or buy it through a health savings account. We want to create those mechanisms.
So, again, all of this is going to take place in November and December--right now, in December. So somehow you would make some calculation in January about what would go into a savings account or are you thinking of a flat number?
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Ms. CANTWELL. If the Senator would continue to yield.
The issue is that, you know, so much of this is already set up, and I think you are trying to be creative in a way to--instead of the Alexander-Murray cost revenue sharing, I think you are trying to figure out something that would get people the same amount of money to make them whole over the next year or two; is that correct?
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Ms. CANTWELL. So I would say what we are trying to do is make people, as the market is out there, whole over the next year or two. That is exactly what we are trying to do.
We are happy to debate how we make health insurance more affordable after that. That has been a goal of our side of the aisle for decades. We want to make it more affordable. Now, we will always be measured about how successful we have been on that, but I think that we are going to continue to strive to make it more affordable and really are proud that we drove down the uninsured rate with the Affordable Care Act because we covered more people, thereby lowering costs because of not having so much uncompensated care.
So I am glad to see somebody saying ``let's talk,'' and let's put a proposal out there. Happy to continue to have a dialogue about any idea that helps us move forward.
You know, the issue is that so many Americans are, in this moment, right now, making these decisions, and how you effect that for the next 2 years is the biggest question.
And you and I know if we said: OK. We are huddling tomorrow or, you know, the Finance Committee is huddling tomorrow, then everybody up here would be trying to convince us not to do various things. So the question is, How can we protect the Marketplace in the next year or two in the simplest way and then get about us going back to business, talking to each other, trying to work out what are the best creative ideas for lowering health insurance costs?
I don't know why we haven't done a PBM bill. My colleague Senator Grassley and I have a bill. I think you have a proposal. Other people have proposals. We are letting PBMs get away with so much in the expensive prescription drugs. I don't know why we don't spend all our time driving down the cost of health insurance.
I am happy to work creatively on ways to protect the market over the next 2 years so that we can finally get to some creative discussions. I thank the Senator.
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