“Democrats blocked legislation that lowers premiums and puts thousands in patients’ pockets to pay for out-of-pocket expenses. They aren’t serious about making health care affordable; they want to send money to insurance companies to pad their profits,” Cassidy told Breitbart News.
He continued, “President Trump and I want to solve the health care affordability crisis. Democrats need to stop playing politics and work with Republicans to lower costs for all Americans.”
Cassidy spoke to Breitbart News as a Senate Democrat bill, which was a concession vote to end their weekslong government shutdown, failed this week. Senate Democrats also failed to embrace the Senate Republican plan, which was led by Cassidy, a physician and chairman of the Senate health committee, and Sen. Mike Crapo (R-ID), the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee.
The Senate GOP plan, informally known as the Crapo-Cassidy plan, would fulfill Trump’s vision to send federal healthcare dollars directly to patients instead of going indirectly to them through health insurers.
Cassidy has continued to rail against Democrats for providing health insurance coverage, even though insurance coverage has remained increasingly expensive due to higher premiums, copays, and deductibles. He referred to this in an interview with Breitbart News as the “absence of affordability.”
The Crapo-Cassidy plan would:
- Send money straight to patients, not insurance companies.
- Appropriates cost-sharing reduction payments (CSRs) that would end “silver loading,” which drove up premiums and federal subsidies. It would lower premiums by roughly 11 percent.
- Americans that have Obamacare “bronze” plans and catastrophic plans could access these federal healthcare dollars in a Health Savings Account (HSA).
- Allow Americans to choose a plan according to their needs by increasing access to catastrophic plans.
- Bar illegal aliens from accessing Medicaid by requiring states to verify citizenship and immigration status before granting coverage.
- Prevent federal dollars from funding gender transition services under Medicaid.
Brian Blase, the president of the Paragon Health Institute and a former Trump administration staffer, noted how this plan would serve as a much better alternative to the current Obamacare subsidies:
A recent poll commissioned by a PAC associated with Senate Republican Conference Chair Tom Cotton (R-AR) found, while half of Republicans and 60 percent of voters back extending the expiring enhanced Obamacare subsidies, many of them can be persuaded to back sending these federal healthcare dollars directly to patients.
Voter support declines to 34 percent after those polled were presented with the Republican arguments against the Obamacare subsidies.
“These subsidies don’t actually lower healthcare costs and won’t stop premiums from increasing, they just shift the cost to taxpayers while insurance companies keep charging high prices,” was found to be the most effective argument to persuade American voters against the Obamacare subsidies.
This argument is not just rhetoric; a report from the Paragon Health Institute that the enhanced Obamacare credits, more formally known as the Enhanced Premium Tax Credit (EPTC), minimally impacted 2026 premiums for 2026 benchmark rates.
“In other words, the sharp jump in premiums cannot be blamed on the phase-out of the enhanced subsidies. The real drivers are the same structural flaws that have plagued Obamacare since 2014 and rising health care costs,” Gabrielle Kalisz, the program manager for the Paragon Health Institute, wrote.
The GOP PAC-sponsored poll found that 60 percent of voters approved of multiple plans for the Obamacare subsidies, which included sending the money directly to HSAs instead of health insurers.
As both chambers of Congress grapple with the looming expiration of the enhanced Obamacare subsidies, as well as increasing healthcare costs, it remains to be seen if Democrats are truly interested in working to lower healthcare costs.
After the failure of both healthcare bills in Congress’s upper chamber on Thursday, one reporter asked Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) what are the next steps on health care.
Thune remarked, “We’ll see, we have people that are interested in chatting with the Dems about it. But we’ll see if they have an audience.”
Breitbart News
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