Heidi Alexander: “the Senator from Washington knows the deep respect I have for her, and we have worked together on some important…”

“the Senator from Washington knows the deep respect I have for her, and we have worked together on some important legislation on our committee when we have had differences of opinion, including on the 21st Century Cures legislation and No Child Left Behind. Yet I have to say, with all due respect, the last 7 months of working with the Senator and the Democrats on trying to fix the Affordable Care Act, as they have asked us to do, has been the most frustrating time in my 16 years in the Senate. For example, she made three points. One is that the Democrats were unhappy that we had reduced taxes and repealed the individual mandate. We know they are unhappy about that, and we know it raised individual rates somewhat, maybe as much as 10 percent. OK. That was last year. So what are we supposed to do--not work to reduce rates? We continue to work to reduce rates. According to the Oliver Wyman experts, the proposal Senator Collins and I have put on the floor, which is basically a combination of bipartisan proposals, would reduce rates by up to 40 percent, taking into account what we did in the tax bill. The CBO, the Congressional Budget Office, said it would reduce rates by up to 20 percent. That is the first point. I understand the Democrats don't like to cut taxes, and they don't like to get rid of the individual mandate, which is a tax on a lot of poor people, but they have to get over that at some point. If you think it raised rates, let's cut rates.…”