Health Care Costs To Really Jump. Murkowski & Sullivan Seek Compromise Before January 1st
Alaska Sens. Sullivan, Murkowski try unsuccessfully to prevent huge spike in health care costs FROM THE ALASKA BEACON. BY: JAMES BRO...
Alaska Sens. Sullivan, Murkowski try unsuccessfully to prevent huge spike in health care costs
Alaska U.S. Senators Lisa Murkowski and Dan Sullivan (Alaska Beacon file photos)
Alaska Republican Sens. Lisa Murkowski and Dan Sullivan joined Senate Democrats and a handful of other Republicans on Thursday in voting to extend federal subsidies that would have prevented a major spike in health care prices at the end of the year.
Sixty votes were needed to advance a bill containing the extension, but the vote failed 51-48. An alternative Republican-backed bill, which would have offered marginal help to offset the cost increases, also failed despite support from Murkowski and Sullivan.
Barring additional action before Jan. 1, thousands of Alaskans and millions of Americans who buy health insurance through the federal marketplace will pay significantly more for health care next year.
“I would just suggest that we have failed,” Murkowski said in a floor speech following the votes.
Sullivan, in a written statement, said in part that “there is little doubt that a lot of hard-working Alaskans, families, entrepreneurs and small business owners will be negatively impacted if these enhanced premium tax credits expire.”
Both Murkowski and Sullivan said they would continue working to try to find a compromise before the end of the year.
The failed Democratic proposal would have offered a flat three-year extension of subsidies that were put in place during the COVID-19 pandemic emergency and extended during the Biden administration.
Most Republican senators opposed a flat extension and emphasized instances of fraud and abuse, saying that further changes were needed to the program.
Even with those changes, the Republican-backed proposal offered only a small cash payment and didn’t extend the subsidies; many Americans and Alaskans would still face large cost increases.
“Now that both the Republican and Democrat proposals failed to advance, I will redouble my efforts to develop a compromise solution. In the longer-term, we need to focus on getting federal government health care dollars out of the hands of insurance companies and into the hands of the people,” Sullivan said in his statement.
