WASHINGTON | The glow from a health care triumph faded quickly for President Barack Obama on Sunday as Democrats realized that the bill they fought so hard to pass in the House has nowhere to go in the Senate.
The sticking point is the government health insurance plan included in the bill, which is unacceptable to a handful of lawmakers who hold the Senate’s balance of power.
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.
Sen. Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican, said the House bill “is dead on arrival in the Senate.”
Democrats did not line up to challenge him. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada has yet to schedule floor debate.
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.
In the 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.
Sen. Olympia Snowe, a Maine Republican who voted for a version of the Senate bill in committee, has given the Democrats a possible way out. She is 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, a Louisiana Democrat.
“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 — through an employer, through a government plan or by purchasing it on their own.
| McClatchy-Tribune
@Nyx.CommentBody@