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Do IT this week: Layering
Prospects for bill passage seem to be improving, but Republicans' support may be limited to 1 vote
By David Lightman
McClatchy Newspapers
Published on Tuesday, Oct 13, 2009
WASHINGTON: President Barack Obama's effort to overhaul the nation's health-care system is expected to clear its last committee hurdle today — but almost certainly without the strong bipartisan endorsement he and some moderate Republicans have sought.
The Senate Finance Committee is expected to vote on a plan that would require nearly all Americans to get coverage, while barring insurers from denying people policies because of pre-existing conditions and imposing excise taxes on insurers' most expensive plans.
The committee is the last of five congressional panels considering the measure. Once Finance is done, Senate leaders and the White House will merge the proposal with another one written by the Senate Health Committee over the summer, creating one bill likely to be considered by lawmakers later this month.
Three House of Representatives committees also have finished writing bills, and those, too, will merge into one. Final House action also is expected in late October.
In the Finance Committee, while virtually all 13 Democrats are
expected to back the proposal, only one of the 10 Republicans, Sen. Olympia Snowe of Maine, is viewed as a possible supporter.
Obama and a parade of Republicans have urged bipartisan cooperation in recent days, but even last week's report from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office that the $829 billion plan will cut $81 billion from the federal deficit over 10 years didn't move most congressional Republicans.
The report ''masks who pays the bills. This package includes hundreds of billions of dollars in new taxes and fees,'' said Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, the committee's top Republican.
Republicans have offered several alternatives to Democrats' health-care plans. GOP proposals usually include strengthening employer-provided insurance and offering tax benefits for those who buy coverage on their own. Democratic-controlled committees have routinely rejected Republican plans.
Calls for civility
Outside Washington, GOP veterans are stressing not specifics, but civility.
California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger urged Congress to ''move forward and accomplish these vital goals for the American people.'' Bush administration Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson said the Finance measure ''moves us down the path of providing affordable, high-quality health care for all.''
Bill Frist, a heart surgeon who served as Senate majority leader from 2003 to 2007, said he would've voted for some health-care bill, though he has some reservations about the Finance measure.
While the statesmen's soothing words are nice, it's important to remember, said Darrell West, vice president and director of governance studies at Washington's Brookings Institution, ''they have no troops to deliver to the U.S. Senate.''
Still, Elizabeth Carpenter, a health-policy expert at the New America Foundation, saw the comments as having some value, noting, ''They're looking at policy, not politics.''
So far, though, policy is having trouble breaking through the political noise — and Democrats know they don't really need many Republicans, because Democrats control 60 of 100 Senate seats and 256 of the House's 435 seats.
Coverage debated
As the Senate committee prepares to vote today, senior Democrats are increasingly squaring off against key industry groups over how many people will ultimately be covered by the bill.
The showdown is fueled by estimates that as many as 17 million people would remain uninsured under the legislation.
Consumer advocates, health providers, insurance companies and others who have provided momentum for the Democratic drive for health legislation are pushing to cover almost all of the roughly 40 million Americans and legal immigrants who currently lack coverage.
But a series of compromises designed to control costs and minimize burdens on consumers has led to cutbacks in the number of uninsured who would be covered by the bill.
That has provoked alarm among hospitals and insurers, who have made universal coverage a condition of their support for this year's drive to pass health-care legislation. The insurance industry Monday stepped up its critique, warning the legislation now moving through Congress would accelerate the rise in premiums.
Leading Democrats are defending the Senate Finance Committee's approach, which would save money by limiting federal subsidies to help people buy insurance. Many believe that is a necessary trade-off, even though it means the health legislation would fall short of a key goal of President Obama and his congressional allies to cover all Americans.
''I'd like more [insurance coverage],'' said Connecticut Sen. Christopher Dodd, a liberal Democrat who shepherded a companion health-care bill through the Senate health committee this summer in place of the late Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass.
''But that's a pretty good start. . . . Senator Kennedy was a great advocate of the idea that you do the best that you can.''
The legislation being voted on today includes $463 billion in subsidies over the next decade and would result in 94 percent of Americans having health insurance coverage, according to the Congressional Budget Office.
WASHINGTON: President Barack Obama's effort to overhaul the nation's health-care system is expected to clear its last committee hurdle today — but almost certainly without the strong bipartisan endorsement he and some moderate Republicans have sought.
Get the full article here.
Comments
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Mogadore, OH
Posted 03:10 AM, 10/13/2009
14,000 Americans lose their healthcare and 122 die every day because of no healthcare....
Posted 06:39 AM, 10/13/2009
news flash 14,000 anericans with health care die too. get a job and get health care so I dont have to pay for yours.
Posted 07:07 AM, 10/13/2009
I can't believe the my kid's future is the hands of the GOP.
Mogadore, OH
Posted 08:26 AM, 10/13/2009
wilma- I worked my way through college and retired at 48 with a full pension with healthcare. My point is for those workers who's employer doesn't provide healthcare. What do you do for a living?
Posted 01:43 PM, 10/13/2009
if the government gets involved no employer will provide health care.
Posted 01:48 PM, 10/13/2009
we are all screwed. I hope the Maya's are correct. Maybe we will get lucky and the entire country will be wiped out like New Orleans. This place needs to be wiped out and started over.
Highland Square, OH
Posted 02:58 PM, 10/13/2009
I just know that somehow you loonies are going to bring Rush Limbaugh, racism, or socialism into this.
And by loonies I mean from both isles. Both the liberals and conservatives are nuts. There's no way you can agree with EVERYTHING one group believes. Get a life. And your own opinion.
Mogadore, OH
Posted 05:11 PM, 10/13/2009
UAEngineering- So why would you bother posting anything given this is all you have to say? For a college student, you need to know you've written an incomplete sentence...
