WASHINGTON – As the Trump administration continues to systematically take actions that are raising costs and reducing quality of health care for Americans, U.S. Senator Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), a member of the U.S. Senate Appropriations and Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committees, called out the Trump administration for sabotaging the American health care system. In a U.S. Senate Appropriations Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies Subcommittee hearing, Murphy emphasized to U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex Azar that repeated efforts by the Trump administration to sabotage the health care system have driven up costs for families and caused Americans to lose insurance. 

Murphy said, “Even with this deliberate campaign of sabotage, even with the administration cutting the open enrollment period in half, even with the administration stopping to market these plans, even with the administration refusing to pay for the navigators, the same number of people signed up last year that signed up the year before. I don’t think that will continue, because at some point, 90 percent price increases are going to force people off no matter how big the subsidies get.”

In a floor speech yesterday, Murphy laid out the facts of how the Trump administration is systematically sabotaging the American health care system. Murphy emphasized that health care premiums have already risen as much as 91 percent, and that the Trump administration’s efforts will force people in Connecticut and across the country to pay more for fewer health care benefits, while insurance companies and drug companies receive massive tax breaks. 

Highlights of Murphy’s exchange with Azar are available below:

MURPHY: I want to continue along the line of questioning from Senator Murray, Mr. Secretary, on this campaign of sabotage that has been waged by the administration driving up rates all across the country.

This is a quote from the head of the largest health insurance company in Maryland talking about why they were going to be dramatically increasing rates, especially for plans that tend to be used by sicker patients. He attributed these rate increases to “the continuing actions on the part of the administration to systemically undermine the market and make it almost impossible to carry out our mission”.

In making that statement, he talked specifically about PPO plans, which are favored by sicker patients, people with chronic illness, and in fact, in one of those plans, in the recent rate filing, premiums went up by 90 percent in Maryland. And so, it gets me to this question of the short-term, what we would call the junk plans, the short-term plans, and the effect that it will have on the market.

The worry of course, as you know, is – and the reason why President Obama moved the time duration down to three months is that because these plans are not subject to the requirements that you cover people with pre-existing conditions the same, that you have a minimum standard of benefits – you’d have a migration of healthy people to these plans, and you’d leave all the sick people, people with pre-existing conditions, behind. And I think you’re already seeing that in the price increases on the exchanges. And so that’s the reason why the Obama administration said, listen we’re going to make these short-term plans actually short-term, three months.

So how do you gauge what insurance companies are already predicting – that there will be a massive migration of healthy people into these short-term plans that are now effectively a complementary option to the exchanges, driving rates up for people with pre-existing conditions, people who simply can’t go on those plans if they don’t cover everything they need? 

AZAR: Senator first, good to see you again. I would say first, it is important to remember that what’s been proposed, nothing is final, but what’s been proposed on the short-term plans is to restore what President Obama had in place until the eve of his retirement from office. So he kept twelve months in place the entirety of his presidency in the program. It’s next important to remember that, of the about ten million people in the individual market, over 82 percent of them, we’re buying their insurance for them, they’re subsidized. People are not going to be leaving subsidized insurance with the full slate of benefits for these short-term plans. 

The individuals that these plans are going to be available for and that’s going to make sense for, folks that have been left out in the cold by the Affordable Care Act. Now those 28 million folks who are sitting out there who can’t afford these sky-rocketing price increases that happened under President Obama in his own plan, and we’re just trying to make options available. They’re not going to be right for everybody, we’re being very transparent about that, but want those as options for those if it makes sense for them.

But what we really have to be working on together is fixing what is wrong, what’s not working here, which is the Affordable Care Act. It’s not delivering, the price increases were happening before President Trump, they’re continuing, it’s not functioning, and we want to work together to come up with a new system.

MURPHY: It’s just not, with all due respect, it’s just not true it’s not functioning. Even with this deliberate campaign of sabotage, even with the administration cutting the open enrollment period in half, even with the administration stopping to market these plans, even with the administration refusing to pay for the navigators, the same number of people signed up last year that signed up the year before. I don’t think that will continue, because at some point, 90 percent price increases are going to force people off no matter how big the subsidies get. 

So, I’m very worried, Mr. Chairman, about the separation of the market into very healthy and very sick as these short-term plans now become true viable options right next to the exchanges. I look forward to continuing the dialogue.

Thank you Mr. Chairman. 

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