CQ TODAY ONLINE NEWS
– HEALTH
Nov. 17, 2008 – 11:23 a.m.
Senate Democrats Get Serious About Health Care System Overhaul
By Alex Wayne, CQ Staff
Rather than waiting for either President-elect Barack Obama to take office next year or for the 111th Congress to convene, Senate Democratic leaders this week are escalating discussions on an ambitious overhaul of the health care system.
Senate Finance Chairman Max Baucus , D-Mont., and Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee Chairman Edward M. Kennedy plan to meet Tuesday to discuss how to craft an overhaul that would fall under the jurisdiction of both committees. Baucus’ committee holds a hearing Wednesday on the issue.
“Now is the time,” Baucus said at a Brookings Institution seminar on health care Monday. “We’re going to get it done.”
Baucus said a comprehensive health care overhaul will be his top priority next year. He has outlined a plan that includes expanding both public and private insurance plans so that every American has coverage, while simultaneously reducing health care costs and improving the quality of care by changing the way health care is delivered and paid for. “The time for incremental improvements has passed,” he said.
About 46 million Americans lack health insurance of any kind, according to the U.S. Census. About 25 million more are under-insured, Baucus said, or in his words, “have some insurance, but it’s lousy insurance.” Health care costs, he said, have meanwhile risen 5.5 times faster than wages from 2000 to 2007.
Obama has said a similar health care overhaul is one of his top priorities, and was a major promise of his campaign. An overhaul also is a top priority for Kennedy, who is recovering from treatment for a malignant brain tumor. But his aides have said he will defer to Obama, who has proposed his own overhaul plan and is expected to send it to Congress early next year.
“I will also continue to lay the ground work for early action by Congress on health reform when President Obama takes office in January,” he said in a statement. “We’ve been making real progress in our discussions about a consensus approach, and I’m optimistic we’ll succeed.”
Baucus, in contrast, wants an overhaul to originate in Congress. He noted the precedent of President Clinton’s failed attempt to overhaul the health care system in the early 1990s. Clinton and his wife, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton , D-N.Y., sent Congress detailed health care legislation more than 1,000 pages long which congressional Republicans quickly demonized, sinking their overhaul effort.
“When I talked to Sen. Clinton a little while ago, she said one of the mistakes they made was it was a little top-down,” Baucus said.
Activity this week is concentrated in the Senate, which has convened for a so-called “lame duck” session to consider a financial bailout of the auto industry. In the House, the committee with primary jurisdiction over health care matters — the Energy and Commerce Committee — is consumed with a leadership battle: Rep. Henry A. Waxman , D-Calif., is trying to wrest leadership of the panel from its long-time chairman, Democrat John D. Dingell of Michigan.
Baucus has invited his committee’s senior Republican, Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, to the Tuesday meeting. He said at Brookings that he hopes a health care overhaul will be bipartisan, but he also sent Republicans a warning shot.
“We may have to get partisan,” he said. “I very much hope not.”
Democrats will enjoy substantially larger majorities in the 111th Congress, with as many as 60 seats in the Senate, raising the possibility that they could pass an overhaul with little Republican support.
Senate Democrats Get Serious About Health Care System Overhaul
In addition to the various meetings and hearings he has scheduled, Baucus said he also is preparing to submit legislative language for a health care overhaul to the Congressional Budget Office, Congress’ spending scorekeeper.
The cost of any overhaul will be a major issue for Congress, which is facing a budget deficit in fiscal 2009 that may exceed $1 trillion. Many Republicans and conservative “Blue Dog” Democrats have insisted that Congress obey so-called “pay-as-you-go” budget rules for major legislation, which demand that any new spending be offset by spending decreases elsewhere in the government or tax increases. But the 110th Congress has frequently bypassed those rules for legislation deemed critical, most recently a $700 billion bailout of the financial services industry.
Comments
All said here is probably true, but it hardly demonstrates the Democrats are ready to get seriuos enough about health care reform. They have had two years to put some competition into Medicare Part D drug purchases, but cling to their co-dependency with Big Pharma. They have had many decades to put VA medical care in the hands of local providers, meanwhile better controlling costs, but cling to their co-dependency on the most recalcitrant of the veterans organizations. When you see some evidence the democrats have begun to sober up from their power drunk behavior, try again to talk about them maybe getting serious about Health Care or any other kind of reform. To date, they have little more than Obama to distinguish them from power drunk Republicans. Meanwhile, if you run into Senator Baucus, please remind him that a few of us still read the US Constitution, and have not forgotten Amerndments 9 & 10. So he can save himself and the whole nation a pile of headaches by dropping that silly totalitarian idea about mandatory health care. No one who pays attention to Washington, D. C., can ignore that sop to Big Pharma, Big Hospital, Big Medicare, AARP (the insurance industry's favorite mouthpiece), and many other big campaign funding sources. The point is that the fate of the US hangs in the balance, but there is little evidence outside the President-Elect that anyone in Congress - either house, either party - has ever been introduced to anything approaching adequate historical study. Walter J. Smith, Enterprise, OR
So far, I see no evidence that the Democrats are serious about meaningful health care reform. All of the current proposals, other than HR676, are really just expansions of the inefficient and wasteful private insurance system. These plans mirror the current fiasco playing out in Massachusetts, an expensive and glaringly flawed scheme that mandates citizens into lousy, expensive HMO plans or punishes them with tax penalties. Anything less than single payer is a bandaid solution doomed to failure.
Wanna see what Tennessee says is "horrifying" but quite "acceptable" health care in E. TN, Profit care comes before Patient care ! www.wisecountyissues.com
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