Government Healthcare Policy, Business and Technology

What to watch for as Senate healthcare hearings get underway

Modern Healthcare: As the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee gears up for four days of hearings on how to stabilize the faltering individual insurance market, all eyes are focused on how the lawmakers will find a bipartisan solution to preserve cost-sharing reductions and give states flexibility for their own markets before time runs out.

Committee members on both sides of the aisle have pledged to work on a bipartisan bill, with the goal of passing something by mid-September, before insurers are slated to deliver final rates.

Rodney Whitlock, vice president of ML Strategies and a former Republican health policy aide on the Senate Finance Committee, said it's possible that the bill ends up being more than just a year or two of appropriations for cost-sharing reduction payments, and a few tweaks to the 1332 waiver process or parameters.

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