House health care bill has nowhere to go in Senate

Monday 09th November, 05:15 AM JST

WASHINGTON —

The glow from a health care triumph faded quickly for President Barack Obama on Sunday as Democrats realized the bill they fought so hard to pass in the House has nowhere to go in the Senate.

Speaking from the Rose Garden about 14 hours after the late Saturday vote, Obama urged senators to be like runners on a relay team and “take the baton and bring this effort to the finish line on behalf of the American people.”

The problem is that the Senate won’t run with it. The government health insurance plan included in the House bill is unacceptable to a few Democratic moderates who hold the balance of power in the Senate.

If a government plan is part of the deal, “as a matter of conscience, I will not allow this bill to come to a final vote,” said Sen Joe Lieberman, the Connecticut independent whose vote Democrats need to overcome GOP filibusters.

“The House bill is dead on arrival in the Senate,” Sen Lindsey Graham, R-SC, said dismissively.

Democrats did not line up to challenge him. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev, has yet to schedule floor debate and hinted last week that senators may not be able to finish health care this year.

Nonetheless, the House vote provided an important lesson in how to succeed with less-than-perfect party unity, and one that Senate Democrats may be able to adapt. House Democrats overcame their own divisions and broke an impasse that threatened the bill after liberals grudgingly accepted tougher restrictions on abortion funding, as abortion opponents demanded.

In Senate, the stumbling block is the idea of the government competing with private insurers. Liberals may have to swallow hard and accept a deal without a public plan in order to keep the legislation alive. As in the House, the compromise appears to be to the right of the political spectrum.

Republican Sen Olympia Snowe of Maine, who voted for a version of the Senate bill in committee, has given the Democrats a possible way out. She’s proposing to allow a government plan as a last resort, if after a few years premiums keep escalating and local health insurance markets remain in the grip of a few big companies. This is the “trigger” option.

That approach appeals to moderates such as Sen Mary Landrieu, D-La. “If the private market fails to reform, there would be a fallback position,” Landrieu said last week. “It should be triggered by choice and affordability, not by political whim.”

Lieberman said he opposes the public plan because it could become a huge and costly entitlement program. “I believe the debt can break America and send us into a recession that’s worse than the one we’re fighting our way out of today,” he said.

For now, Reid is trying to find the votes for a different approach: a government plan that states could opt out of.

The Senate is not likely to jump ahead this week on health care. Reid will keep meeting with senators to see if he can work out a political formula that will give him not only the 60 votes needed to begin debate, but the 60 needed to shut off discussion and bring the bill to a final vote.

Toward the end of the week, the Congressional Budget Office may report back with a costs and coverage estimate on Reid’s bill, which he assembled from legislation passed by the Finance Committee and the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee. The Finance Committee version does not include a government plan.

Reid has pledged to Obama that he will get the bill done by the end of the year and remains committed to doing that, according to a Senate leadership aide.

Both the House and Senate bills gradually would extend coverage to nearly all Americans by providing government subsidies to help pay premiums. The measures would bar insurers’ practices such as charging more to those in poor health or denying them coverage altogether.

All Americans would be required to carry health insurance, either through an employer, a government plan or by purchasing it on their own.

To keep down costs, the government subsidies and consumer protections don’t take effect until 2013. During the three-year transition, both bills would provide $5 billion in federal dollars to help get coverage for people with medical problems who are turned down by private insurers.

Both House and Senate would expand significantly the federal-state Medicaid health program for low-income people.

The majority of people with employer-provided health insurance would not see changes. The main beneficiaries would be some 30 million people who have no coverage at work or have to buy it on their own. The legislation would create a federally regulated marketplace where they could shop for coverage.

The are several major differences between the bills.

—The House would require employers to provide coverage; the Senate does not.

—The House would pay for the coverage expansion by raising taxes on upper-income earners; the Senate uses a variety of taxes and fees, including a levy on high-cost insurance plans.

—The House plan costs about $1.2 trillion over 10 years; the Senate version is under $900 billion.

By defusing the abortion issue — at least for now — the House may have helped the long-term prospects for the bill. Catholic bishops also eager to expand society’s safety net may yet endorse the final legislation.

Lieberman appeared on “Fox News Sunday,” while Graham was CBS’ “Face the Nation.”

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Latest 15 of 34 Total Comments Show All

presto345 at 11:34 PM JST - 9th November

Most Americans have adequate health insurance

Most is not good enough.

No one is turned away at American hospitals

Utter BS and you know it.
Sarge at 11:53 PM JST - 9th November

"Utter BS and you know it."

Is not, and you can't prove me wrong. If you are extremely ill or gravely injured, there is not one U.S. hospital that will refuse to treat you, whether you have insurance or not. It's the law.
presto345 at 12:04 AM JST - 10th November

If you are extremely ill or gravely injured

So right - and let's ignore the rest. That's how it works. Does that satisfy you, your family members with recurring 'less than extreme injuries, etc.', your aging parents, and so on? Come on, stop defending a severely flawed health care system.
cleo at 12:05 AM JST - 10th November

If you are extremely ill...

Wouldn't it be better - and ultimately cheaper - to have a system where people can get treatment before their condition reaches the 'seriously ill' stage?
Sarge at 12:06 AM JST - 10th November

If our health care system is so flawed, why do we have these thousands of people trying to get into our country every year?
presto345 at 12:11 AM JST - 10th November

If our health care system is so flawed, why do we have these thousands of people trying to get into our country every year?

What are you blabbering about? What thousands? Per when? And they aren't coming for the health care system.
Sarge at 12:15 AM JST - 10th November

Cleo, the best preventative medical care won't prevent a lot of serious illness. Some people are going to get seriously ill no matter how much care they've received. I know, I have first-hand experience of this.

Look, I'm not saying our health care is the best, but I certainly don't want government-run health care. The government should not be in the health care business, just like it shouldn't be in the car business.
Sarge at 12:19 AM JST - 10th November

"What thousands?"

Yeah, it's thousands. Every year! Check it out!

"And they aren't coming for the health care system"

Well, our "flawed" health care system certainly isn't stopping them.
presto345 at 12:20 AM JST - 10th November

Health care business and car business. Great comparisons. You are losing it my friend.
presto345 at 12:26 AM JST - 10th November

Well, our "flawed" health care system certainly isn't stopping them.

Absolutely not. They have no idea what they are getting into. How fu .. ., uhh, flawed the system really is.
USAFdude at 12:29 AM JST - 10th November

Yeah, it's thousands. Every year! Check it out!

Check it out where?!

The government should not be in the health care business, just like it shouldn't be in the car business.

This statement begs a question: Exactly what DO you want our government to do, if not govern? Seems to me like governing is our elected leaders' job...
cleo at 01:36 AM JST - 10th November

the best preventative medical care won't prevent a lot of serious illness.

Then again, a bit of basic preventative care can prevent a lot of serious illness. Are you seriously suggesting that it's OK for a parent not to be able to afford to have a doctor look at a child with a fever and a cough, because the kid can get free care in the ER when his sore throat develops into full-blown acute pneumonia?
skipthesong at 08:15 AM JST - 10th November

presto: sarge is right! A Hospital can not turn you away at the emergency room. they can refuse you certain care, if you are not covered but that is more to do with you suing them should they fail to heal you or make a mistake, thus the call for tort reform but they will still be able to do that even in many countries with national health care.... And Japan does do that.
Badsey at 08:27 AM JST - 10th November

A hospital can turn away non-emergency care and direct you to a walk-clinic (they charge even if no insurance). If the walk-in clinics are closed (8pm-->8am etc) the emergency room must take you = You never want to get hurt when the clinics are closed in a poor part of a big city because the emergency area is jammed with people that don't have insurance and expect free medical care.

Michelle Obama worked on directing patients away from the university hospital emergency to the city hospitals.
hworta269 at 08:25 PM JST - 11th November

Well they could cover all the Americans that dont have insurance for a hell of a lot less then a few trillion dollars bankrupting America in the process. Socialized medicine is about keeping socialists in power not covering people. Under this plan more Americans will be denied coverage then dont have it and want it now and everyone will have to pay upwards of an extra 7G's a year for their premiums or if they dont buy coverage they will go to jail. Thats a little odd. The government enforces senile regulations that drive up health care costs and this plan will drive up private insurance costs even more. They are going to fund it by cutting medicare which is a system people have paid in to their entire lives and charge healthy people more for health care to pay for the sick people. This bill also penalizes states that have enacted tort reform in a blatant payoff to the trial lawyers that help gets these wackos elected. To boot this bill does not force people to prove they are citizens to receive health care from the government yet strangely exempted non citizens from having to pay anything for the whole damned plan.