Senate HELP Committee will hold bipartisan health care reform hearings
WASHINGTON- Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee Chairman Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) and Ranking Member Patty Murray (D-Wash.) said they are working together to advance bipartisan health care reform.
“This committee will hold hearings beginning the week of September 4th on the actions Congress should take to stabilize and strengthen the individual health insurance market so that Americans will be able to buy insurance at affordable prices in the year 2018,” the senators said in a joint statement Tuesday.
“We will hear from state insurance commissioners, patients, governors, health care experts and insurance companies,” they explained.
The senators’ announcement comes less than a week after the upper chamber defeated legislation that would have repealed most of the Affordable Care Act. Three Republicans joined the Senate’s 46 Democrats and two independent members in opposing the legislation.
President Donald Trump this past weekend unleashed a series of Tweets demanding that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) propose lowering the filibuster threshold so as to rehabilitate the failed health care bill.
McConnell said Tuesday that Republicans lack sufficient support to change the filibuster rule.
Alexander and Murray are working in conjunction with the bipartisan House Problem Solvers Caucus to help craft consensus legislation but House GOP leaders have said they are not amenable to such proposals.
The House in May passed legislation to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act.
The Senate attempted repeal as well as repeal and replacement measures.
This article is republished with permission from Talk Media News
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