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This week, the Senate will do something it hasn’t done in seven years: hold bipartisan hearings on the future of the Affordable Care Act. Serious and creative ideas will be presented. But don’t expect big policy changes anytime soon. Experts and lobbyists close to the congressional process say that, despite consensus that Obamacare’s markets are too thin and too expensive, very few reforms have any chance of becoming law before insurers begin selling Obamacare plans for next year. (Margot Sanger-Katz, 9/6)

Like so many people across the country, I breathed a sigh of relief when Trumpcare didn’t reach the president’s desk this summer. But legislation isn’t the only way the current administration has tried to undermine families’ health care and raise their costs. In fact, if Congress doesn’t act soon, patients and families will face higher premiums and fewer choices next year as a direct result of President Trump’s attempt to score political points by, as he says, letting the health care in our country “implode.” (Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), 9/5)

As Congress returns to work this week, its agenda is crowded with must-pass legislation. To avoid shutting down the government, lawmakers will have to vote for new spending bills. To avoid a debt crisis, they will have to increase the debt limit. To avoid depriving millions of low-income children of health insurance, they will need to reauthorize funding for it. And since the Trump administration on its own seems unwilling to make the Obamacare health-insurance exchanges work more effectively, Congress will need to make some fixes. ... But it will require the kind of deal-making that seems to have disappeared in a hyper-polarized Washington – so “most likely” is far from a sure thing. (Peter R. Orszag, 9/5)

The basic structure of the American health care system, in which most people have private insurance through their jobs, might seem historically inevitable, consistent with the capitalistic, individualist ethos of the nation. In truth, it was hardly preordained. In fact, the system is largely a result of one event, World War II, and the wage freezes and tax policy that emerged because of it. Unfortunately, what made sense then may not make as much right now. (Aaron E. Carroll, 9/5)