New Bipartisan Group to Tackle Health-Care Reform
By Shailagh Murray
Seven senators have formed a bipartisan group to find consensus on health-care reform legislation, a sign of fresh momentum after a week of setbacks.
The group, dubbed by its members as the "Coalition of the Willing," includes Finance Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) and the ranking Republican on the panel, Sen. Charles Grassley (Iowa). Others who attended the first meeting this afternoon in the Capitol included Sen. Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.), Senate Budget Chairman Kent Conrad (D-N.D.), and GOP Sens. Orrin Hatch (Utah), Olympia Snowe (Maine), and Mike Enzi (R-Wyo.), the ranking minority member of the Senate health committee.
The finance panel aims to produce a bill with a total price tag of under $1 trillion over 10 years. Baucus said the legislation could be unveiled next week, although the committee is not expected to begin formal debate until after the July 4 recess. Baucus had aimed to start deliberations on Tuesday. But he announced yesterday that lawmakers needed additional time to digest a complex menu of provisions.
Prominent lawmakers on both sides of the aisle said the Senate delay appeared to represent no grave long-term threat. And some Republicans welcomed the delay as a signal that Baucus would continue to seek broad consensus -- at least on his panel. And the chairman himself remained remarkably bullish. "There's no doubt in my mind we're going to get a bipartisan bill," Baucus told reporters this afternoon.
“Senator Baucus and I are working in a bipartisan way, which means that Senator Baucus, even though he's in the majority, did not kind of put down a take-it-or-leave-it thing of change-it-if-you've-got-the-votes- to-change-it attitude,” Grassley told Iowa reporters in an interview Thursday.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (Calif.) also cautioned that the process would likely stretch for many months, with numerous obstacles along the way. “When you talk about snags, we're on Capitol Hill, we're in the legislative process,” she told reporters Thursday. “We don't all come here because we all think alike on every subject.”
But the number of unresolved issues remains daunting. One contentious debate involves a so-called “pay or play” provision that would require large employers to subsidize public coverage for their workers, if the companies do not offer their own affordable coverage. The Congressional Budget Office has identified the risk of employees dropping their company coverage to enroll in a public programs as a potentially huge and costly unintended consequence.
“If it’s not pay or play it has to be something that drives down cost and increases the number of people who are participating,” said Sen. Christoper Dodd (D-Conn.), who is filling in for the ailing Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) at the helm of the Senate health committee.
Dodd said several ideas are circulating to provide effective yet affordable coverage incentives. “Clearly you can’t have a bill that costs too much and doesn’t affect the number of people you want,” said Dodd. “We’ve got to respond to that.”
By
Sarah Lovenheim
|
June 18, 2009; 6:09 PM ET
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Posted by: Avedon | June 19, 2009 7:22 AM | Report abuse
When will the media stop referring to this as health "care" reform - it's really health INSURANCE reform.
Posted by: GeraldWeinand | June 19, 2009 8:03 AM | Report abuse
I don't even know why Democrats should vote for Democrats any more -- why don't we vote in a "bipartisan" manner so that elected Democratic leaders can just do what they want to do any way, which is to work with Republicans to make worse policies.
After all, this isn't about what I or other ordinary Americans have to deal with, this is about how politicians feel like they're making lobbyists and Republicans happy.
Great work guys! Victory is assured forever! If only Democrats had 800 Senators, why, why then, man would they finally do what their voters wanted!
Posted by: En_Buenora | June 19, 2009 8:22 AM | Report abuse
have each of the senators refused their generous taxpayer-financed health insurance policies? and that includes coverage for their families.
since they're so enthralled with the private marketplace; they should have no qualms about demonstrating to the rest of the country the ginormous savings/and awesome benefits they've been experiencing with their self-paid insurance coverage....
oh wait....
Posted by: mycomment | June 19, 2009 8:30 AM | Report abuse
Bipartisan reform equals no reform.
Posted by: pTirebiter | June 19, 2009 10:19 AM | Report abuse
"have each of the senators refused their generous taxpayer-financed health insurance policies? and that includes coverage for their families."
That happens right after MESSIAH agrees to use only VA. And its HIV-tipped equipment.
Single-payer makes so much sense!
Posted by: russpoter | June 19, 2009 10:31 AM | Report abuse
@russpoter:
While I detect a subtext of occult bigotry in your argument, I heartily concur with you that single-payer makes so much sense.
Wait, were you being sarcastic? I should have suspected.
Conservatives are such reasonable people!
Posted by: jaytingle | June 19, 2009 11:04 AM | Report abuse
When one is diagnosed with a malignant, parasitical tumor, one does not open negotiations with it.
The US health care system has a malignant, parasitical tumor right now, called the health "insurance" industry.
If the tumor is not removed, the patient will die.
A "bipartisan" plan will do nothing to attack the tumor.
Single payer is the solution.
Posted by: gfrazier | June 19, 2009 12:23 PM | Report abuse
I just care about health care. I don't care whether it's bipartisan health care. There's no such thing!
Only Versailles and courtiers like Shailagh Murray think bipartisanship is more important than outcomes. And the sooner Versailles is bulldozed, the better.
Posted by: lambert_strether | June 19, 2009 12:56 PM | Report abuse
Coalition of the Willing? When was the last time I heard that phrase? I can't quite put my finger on it, but I seem to remember a lot of people getting killed around the same time. What morons.
Posted by: klcscott | June 19, 2009 1:04 PM | Report abuse
A good, real health care plan, which must include a public health care option, is crucial for our country. Achieving this is far more important than "consensus" in the Senate; "consensus" means that nothing has changed in health care.
"Consensus" or a "bipartisan" bill means the big insurance and drug companies and the AMA have won again. It will mean that all of us will be at the mercy of these large corporations who frankly don't care about much beyond their profit margins.
Denial of claims; refusal to offer you a policy; "co-pays" and "deductibles" amounting to tens of thousands, or hundreds of thousands; refusal to pay for critical procedures, etc., etc, etc. This obscene madness will go on for years if we don't enact a public health care option.
The Republicans have one goal: to kill anything that would reduce the profits of their "clients"---the big drug and insurance companies. They want a "consensus" bill that will be watered down to something that sounds good but delivers no real changes in the current system.
The Republicans lost for a reason last November. They had their chance and they did absolutely nothing for years except help the big drug and insurance companies.
This isn't a time for "compromise" and "consensus". This is the time to stand and fight on behalf of the citizens who gave you power and desperately need you to deliver a public health care option.
Posted by: snesich | June 19, 2009 1:41 PM | Report abuse
I think this is just not going to happen. How can they have folks that want nothing do with a government health plan. I know that you folks are trying to have a Kennedy Plan, but he has a plan for himself. If you looked at your newpaper at the beginning of the week you would have heard that Congress is looking for 1.6 trillion for their own health plan. I think the rest of us that do have health insurance will picket for weeks, like the Iranians, for the right of not having a govt. health plan.
Posted by: elainekramer | June 19, 2009 3:09 PM | Report abuse
The blue dogs have taken a big blue crap on health care reform. Why don't they just put red lights outside their offices so we know that they are busy turning tricks? Max Baucus is the Jeff Gannon of reform.
Posted by: sparkplug1 | June 19, 2009 3:49 PM | Report abuse
The comments to this entry are closed.
I'm so suprprised to hear that a group of people who have vowed to prevent a good healthcare plan have banded together to prevent good healthcare.
That's the only bipartisan plan you will ever get, since the Republicans have committed to prevent a real healthcare solution. And that's why Obama's plan stinks - not because it is too liberal, but because it is to right-wing.
No plan that satisfies any Congressional Republicans will be good.