In a roundtable near Alexandria today, Sen. Tim Kaine (D-VA) said there is a small chance that the Senate will coalesce around a deal to prevent premium health care hikes for millions of Americans before next month.
Kaine made the statement surrounded by health care professionals at a Neighborhood Health clinic just south of Alexandria, in the wake of Thursday’s rejection of health care bills in the U.S. Senate to extend Affordable Care Act subsidy extensions passed in 2021 that will expire at the end of this year.
Sometimes, each party’s proposal has to fail before something comes together, Kaine said.
“Yesterday was not a good day,” Kaine said. “I would say it’s a 40% likelihood that we’ll find a solution between now and the middle of January on the tax credit, and that would require an extension of open enrollment and some backdated reimbursement of people if they had to pay higher premiums between January, and then giving people the chance to access lower premiums.”
Kaine continued, “It’s probably less than 40%, but this is going to be the dominant issue in public policy over the next year or so.”
Kerensa Green Sumers, a local clinical services case worker, broke down into tears when discussing the impact that the cuts to subsidies will have.
“These cuts are going to kill a lot of the people we support, and it’s going to harm so many kids who are getting the support they need,” Sumers said. “It’s going to end up causing a deficit in caregivers, where no one’s going to be able to get services.”
Kaine broke ranks with his Democratic colleagues to end the government shutdown, which lasted from Oct. 1 to Nov. 12, with the promise from Senate Republicans for a vote to extend ACA premium tax credits.
“Insurance is just too expensive, and so unless we extend those tax credits, so many people are going to have to pay too much,” Kaine said. “About 100,000 people will not be able to buy health insurance on the exchange (in Virginia), and about half of them won’t be able to find health insurance at all. Some will find lesser insurance or super more expensive insurance, but about half, 50,000 people, are likely to go uninsured unless we find a path forward.”
Neighborhood Health supports more than 40,000 low-income patients in Northern Virginia. CEO Dr. Basim Khan said that access to care in Virginia was dramatically improved by an expansion to Medicaid coverage in 2019, and that now community health care centers are stressed more than he’s ever seen.
“I worry a lot about the patients who are going to lose coverage,” Khan said. “I worry a lot about our safety net as well, community health centers across the state, how we’re going to be able to meet the need come in the coming months.”
Kaine said that he “took some grief” for being one of the eight Democratic Senators to vote to end the shutdown.
“Not everybody felt good about the decision I made,” Kaine said. “The Dems unified around a straightforward three-year extension of the enhanced tax credits.”
Kaine continued, “I think the right strategy is extend the tax credits for a period of time. There’s nothing magic about three years. It shouldn’t be one year, because it’s too it’d be too nutty with the election cycle next year, but it should be at least two.”
