Dr Gail Wilensky Remains "Hopeful" for Bipartisan Legislation on Healthcare Reform

The healthcare legislation from Senators Bill Cassidy (R-Louisiana) and Susan Collins (R-Maine) was probably the best chance at a bipartisan bill, but there are some Democrats who still seem interested in drafting bipartisan legislation, explained Gail Wilensky, PhD, of Project HOPE.

Transcript

There have been rumors that some Republican senators are interested in working with Democrats to craft a healthcare bill. What do you think is the likelihood of a bipartisan bill being created?

Well, I remain ever hopeful. I find the Cassidy-Collins legislation, which is a likely vehicle to at least start discussions of bipartisan support, very promising since one of the options is if you like the Affordable Care Act you can keep the Affordable Care Act in your state with a very small haircut of 5% for the subsidies.

I was very disappointed that the Democratic leadership in the Senate just trashed that idea when it was first raised because I think it genuinely was an attempt to do outreach to Democrats to see whether they couldn’t come to an agreement on a way to allow states that like the Affordable Care Act to keep it and to allow states that wanted to use their money differently to do so within some very confined parameters.

So right now there are only about 3 Senators on the Democratic side that have expressed much interest, but we’ll see what happens in the future.