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The Senate's health panel intends to craft a bipartisan bill to stabilize the insurance markets by early next week, enabling the full Senate to pass it by the end of the month, according to Chairman Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.). Alexander laid out the goal Thursday during the Health Committee’s fourth hearing on stabilizing the markets ahead of a Sept. 27 deadline for insurers to sign contracts to sell plans on HealthCare.gov, with open enrollment beginning Nov. 1. Last week, Alexander said he’d hoped for a deal by the end of this week. (Roubein, 9/14)

Differences remain between requests from Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Chairman Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., and ranking member Patty Murray, D-Wash., but the two expressed confidence Thursday that they would reach a deal. ... While Alexander said he has not received assurances from Majority Leader Mitch McConnell that a bill the committee leaders produce would get a floor vote, the Kentucky Republican and Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer, D-N.Y., are monitoring their progress. “They know that we may get a result, and if we do, they’ll have to deal with it in the last week of September for it to have effect in 2018,” Alexander said. (Clason, 9/14)

As a Senate panel tries to agree on a bipartisan fix to stabilize the Affordable Care Act, some Democrats appear willing to part with the law’s controversial individual mandate — as long as there is an adequate replacement. ... At least two Democratic senators — Claire McCaskill of Missouri and Tim Kaine of Virginia — have expressed interest in automatically enrolling uninsured Americans in a low-cost insurance plan, a proposal that was included in one Republican plan to repeal Obamacare earlier this year. And 10 moderate House Democrats raised auto-enrollment as a potential tool to increase coverage and stabilize the Obamacare exchanges in a health care proposal released in July. (Reid, 9/14)

At the last of four hearings held by the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, expert witnesses representing insurers, providers, consumers and state insurance commissioners stressed the urgent need for Congress to fund payments to insurers for the Affordable Care Act's cost-sharing reductions to low-income consumers. ... In addition, they pressed for a federal reinsurance program to help carriers with the cost of sicker enrollees. And they urged strong enforcement of the law's requirement that everyone buy insurance, or an alternative mechanism to prod consumers to maintain continuous coverage. (Meyer, 9/14)

Nashville surgeon Manny Sethi told a Senate panel Thursday that Tennesseans’ struggles to get healthy are tied directly to the challenges facing the individual health insurance market. Critically ill patients who have undergone multiple surgeries and clinic visits have suddenly seen their health insurance canceled or have been forced to find a new doctor to comply with rules imposed by their insurance company – in some cases, the only insurer in their county, Sethi said. (Collins, 9/14)

While some progressives campaigned this week for “Medicare for all,” a group of moderate House Democrats aligned themselves with a more modest push to stabilize the Affordable Care Act, arguing that it could spur broader health care reforms in the future. Thirty-five of the 61 members of the New Democrat Coalition sent a letter Friday urging the leaders of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee to agree on a bipartisan bill to keep premiums from rising further for Obamacare enrollees next year. (Reid, 9/15)