Tester: Obamacare debate happened five years ago

With the U.S. Congress playing a “game of chicken” over cutting out the funding for the health care reform act, U.S. Sen. Jon Tester, D-Mont, said the lawmakers now should be looking at ways to improve what he called a good bill, instead of taking more than 40 votes to repeal or defund it.

The U.S. Senate is expected this afternoon to pass a bill to keep government running after next Tuesday that strips away a House of Representatives requirement to defund Obamacare, the health care reform act Congress approved in 2010.

Tester said it was difficult to sit and listen to what he called factually inaccurate statements about the Affordable Care Act being made on the Senate floor Thursday.

“I heard a guy on the floor … say, ‘We’re going to take a vote on whether we want Obamacare or not,’” Tester said. “We took that vote four years ago, and we can keep taking them if you want, but the conclusion is not going to be any different.”

He said people already are seeing benefits from the bill, which takes full effect next year, including people with pre-existing conditions being guaranteed access to insurance, the ending of lifetime limits on payments and people being able to stay on their parents’ insurance to age 26. People also are seeing savings on their premiums through the exchange rates set up in states — which the Montana Legislature would not allow, leaving the federal government to set it up, as well as not expanding Medicaid, Tester said.

“That was a mistake too, and a lot of other states did, a lot of very conservative states did, as a matter of fact, because they saw the real benefits for their population,” he said.

As the exchanges grow, people are likely to see rates go lower through larger insurance pools, Tester said.

“That being said, … is the bill perfect? Heck no, it’s not perfect,” Tester said. “There’s some things we can do to make it better, but it’s going to take folks working together, and I can tell you, the attitude around here right now is we don’t want to fix it because we don’t want to give folks credit for a good bill.

“But the bottom line is, (Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole, R-Kan.) put this bill out in 1995 in the United States Senate, and it was picked up again and brought up here when (Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont.) did it (in 2009), and it’s a bill that I think is going to help folks.”