Moderate Lawmakers Drafting Bipartisan Obamacare Legislation

After establishment Republicans tanked the Obamacare repeal, a coalition of 40 moderate House Republicans and Democrats plan to unveil a new healthcare plan this week.

The Problem Solvers caucus, led by Rep. Tom Reed (R-NY) and Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ) will unveil a plan to stabilize the Obamacare marketplace, according to Politico. Other moderate Republicans such as the Rep. Kurt Schrader (D-OR) and other centrists from the New Democrat Coalition and the Republican Tuesday Group hope to find a bipartisan consensus to Obamacare.

The moderate plan would fund Obamacare’s cost-sharing subsidies; insurers use these $7 billion in subsidies to reduce out-of-pocket costs such as deductibles and premiums for low-income Obamacare consumers.

The bipartisan group also would change Obamacare’s employer mandate so that employers with more than 500 full-time employees would have to supply their workers with health insurance. Obamacare requires that employers with 50 or more full-time employees have to provide their employees with health insurance.

The employers would establish a federal stability fund to an unspecified amount, similar to the House-passed American Health Care Act (AHCA) and the Senate leadership’s Better Care Reconciliation Act (BCRA). The federal stability fun would help reduce premiums and other costs for people with expensive medical needs.

The bipartisan group of lawmakers plans to rescind Obamacare’s medical device tax, an idea that both Democrats and Republicans support.

The group’s plan would allow states to have greater flexibility regarding how they implement Obamacare’s health insurance coverage requirements.

The plan would not alter Obamacare’s individual mandate, Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion, the Affordable Care Act’s insurance regulations, or nearly any of the 2010 health care law’s nearly $1 trillion in taxes.

The bipartisan group of lawmakers became emboldened after the Sens. John McCain (R-AZ), Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), and Susan Collins (R-ME) shot down the Obamacare repeal in the Senate last week.