A Senate Health Bill Gains With One Republican Vote
The "Health Care Focus Group" of MAPJ has selected one of its objectives is to disseminate relevant information about health care issues of concern to MAPJ and our target audiences. This New York Times article, though over 10 days old at this time, gives a nice summary of the relevant details of the U.S. Senate health care bill that is being debated and moving forward with other legislation that may be acted on in the near future and have significant implications for the future of health care funding in the U.S.
Tom Phillips
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The New York Times
October 14, 2009
A Senate Health Bill Gains With One Republican Vote
By ROBERT PEAR AND DAVID M. HERSZENHORN; DAVID STOUT CONTRIBUTED REPORTING.
After months of relentless courting and suspense, Senator Olympia J. Snowe, Republican of Maine, cast her vote with Democrats on Tuesday as the Senate Finance Committee approved legislation to remake the health care system and provide coverage to millions of the uninsured.
With Ms. Snowe's support, the committee backed the $829 billion measure on a vote of 14 to 9, with all the other Republicans opposed.
''Is this bill all that I would want?'' Ms. Snowe said. ''Far from it. Is it all that it can be? No. But when history calls, history calls. And I happen to think that the consequences of inaction dictate the urgency of Congress to take every opportunity to demonstrate its capacity to solve the monumental issues of our time.''
Ms. Snowe's remarks silenced the packed committee room, riveted colleagues and thrilled the White House. President Obama had sought her vote, hoping that she would break with Republican leaders and provide at least a veneer of bipartisanship to the bill, which he has declared his top domestic priority.
Mr. Obama, speaking in the Rose Garden, described the committee's action as ''a critical milestone'' and declared, ''We are now closer than ever before to passing health reform.'' But he added: ''Now is not the time to pat ourselves on the back. Now is not the time to offer ourselves congratulations. Now is the time to dig in and work even harder to get this done.''
With its vote Tuesday, the Finance Committee became the fifth -- and final -- Congressional panel to approve a sweeping health care bill. The action will now move to the floors of the House and the Senate, where the health care measures still face significant hurdles.
Aside from Ms. Snowe, no Republicans in Congress have publicly endorsed the bills in their current form. And Republican leaders are strongly opposed, saying the bills cost too much, raise taxes, cut Medicare and dangerously expand federal power.
Pressure from lobbyists is sure to grow in the coming weeks. And many more lawmakers will get involved in what promise to be impassioned and highly politicized debates in the Senate and the House.
After the Finance Committee vote, the chief architect of the bill, Senator Max Baucus, Democrat of Montana and chairman of the committee, declared: ''It's clear that health care reform will pass this year. Our action today provides terrific momentum.''
Senator Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, the senior Republican on the Finance Committee, said the bill put the nation on ''a slippery slope toward more and more government control of health care.''
Ms. Snowe helped write the Finance Committee bill, in months of bipartisan negotiations, but had not committed to vote for it. She said Tuesday that she shared many of her Republican colleagues' reservations about the legislation, and pointedly warned Democrats that they could lose her support later in the legislative process.
''My vote today is my vote today,'' she said. ''It doesn't forecast what my vote will be tomorrow.'' And she observed, ''There are many, many miles to go in this legislative journey.''
Ms. Snowe gave no clue how she would vote in the first few hours of committee deliberations Tuesday and she did not alert the White House to her plans.
While colleagues spoke, she kept her head buried in papers, fidgeted and spoke occasionally with aides. When Mr. Baucus stepped over to speak to her, a small army of photographers snapped pictures, with cameras clicking like a chorus of chirping crickets.
The Congressional Budget Office said the bill would cost $829 billion over 10 years. The costs include $345 billion for the expansion of Medicaid and $461 billion for subsidies to help lower-income people buy insurance.
The budget office said the costs would be completely offset by new fees and taxes and by cutbacks in Medicare, so federal budget deficits in the next 10 years would be $81 billion lower than now projected.
But Douglas W. Elmendorf, director of the Congressional Budget Office, said his agency had not estimated the impact of the bill on overall national health spending, public and private, and could not say whether it would ''bend the cost curve,'' as Mr. Obama and lawmakers want.
Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company
