point, the stabilization of those markets would involve some members of your party, ie the president and secretary price, not talk ing about discontinuing the cost sharing subsidies. can you achieve that? sure. the reality is we have got 40% of counties across the country that we re only going to have one choice next year. 2018 is coming fast. we have many counties that have no choices. you have families and individuals that are caught, they have no options. there are a lot of things we continue to disagree on, but we came together as the problem solvers caucus to be laser focused on stabilizing the individual market, provide relief to families and to small businesses. so if you look at some of the things we asked for, moving the employer mandate from 50 individuals, 30 hours a workweek to 500 individuals at 40 hours a workweek this is going to provide some real relief to small businesses and open up the firewall between the employer and individual market that also can help stabilize
following months of private meetings between the problem solvers. joining me to talk about this democrat senator chris van hollen, member of senate appropriations committee. senator, grate to see you. thank you for being with us. good to be with you. i ll talk about this later on, give the audience a breakdown why these cost sharing subsidies are the issue. this is what the president is talking about. the deparent health and human services gives money over monthly to people to subsidize the insurance companies really, subsidize low income on the policies. that is one way to kill obamacare without legislation. that s right. these are payments to help reduce the cost of insurance to lower income people in the exchange, which helps increase the number of people who participate in the exchanges, which stabilizes the exchanges. you re absolutely right. this is within the power of the trump administration to continue
obamacare but achieves some of the goals? we ve also said, ali, there are ways to strengthen the exchanges specifically. we are not doing to go after medicaid and these very deep cuts to medicaid that republicans proposed and we re not doing to do that while providing tax breaks to very wealthy people, including the insurance companies, i should say. it s interesting to read that donald trump tweet this morning. he was supporting the house bill and senate bills that provided big tax breaks to the insurance companies including tax breaks for the bonuses insurance companies pay to the ceos. that was the giveaway to the insurance companies. now subsidies to insurance companies. a little inconsistent on tha front the. exactly. good to see you. thank you for being with me. good to be with you. chris van hollen, democratic senator from maryland. donald trump hints he might end this subsidy program that gives health care to the poor. we re going to explain how these cost sharing
insurance companies and bailouts from member of congress will end very soon. the president is referring to two things. one is ending em plier contributions for health insurance for members of congress. that s the contribution lawmakers get from the federal government. the other point he makes is cost sharing subsidies that make up co-pays for 7. million people across the country. that is a stretch that has gone from both sides of the aisle. sn susan collins took issue with the word bail and arguing getting rid of the subsidies that insurance countries rely on would hurt many across the country. insurers warn that premiums could rise for people buying coverage both on the exchange and off the exchange. if these subsidies are ended.
van hollen about this. let me talk about what these subsidies are. this is what they wost $7 billion, 2018 more expensive, $10 billion, partially because insurance rate premiums going up. they were going up before obamacare, during obamacare and depending what you do afterward they are still going up. they are never doing down. the number of americans that receive these cost sharing subsidies, 7.1 million low in come people who receive money to subsidize insurance. ultimately the money ends up with the insurance companies, which is why donald trump is referring to them as insurance company subsidies but the money goes to individuals first. here is what happens if donald trump s threat comes through and the money doesn t end up getting to those people. the insurance companies can either absorb the costs. they are publicly traded companies in most cases. that s not likely to happen. they can request midyear premium rate increase which they would be likely to get because their