Last week in DC: the healthcare reform debate – January 25, 2010

Last Tuesday’s stunning Republican victory in Massachusetts left the future of healthcare reform legislation uncertain, at best. After the game-changing Senate special election, Democrats spent the week assessing the damage and working to figure out a path forward on their top legislative priority.

A REFERENDUM ON HEALTHCARE REFORM?

Earlier this month, Republican Scott Brown’s campaign to fill the Senate seat of the late Edward M. Kennedy (D-MA) was seen as a long shot in a state that had not elected a Republican to the U.S. Senate in nearly 40 years. However, a well-run campaign and a late surge of momentum allowed Brown to pull off the unthinkable when he handily defeated his opponent, state Attorney General Martha Coakley, in Tuesday’s special election.

The results – which gleeful Republicans immediately hailed as a referendum on Democrats’ ongoing efforts to enact comprehensive healthcare reform legislation – robbed the Democratic caucus of the 60 vote supermajority it has needed to pass any healthcare bill. As the crucial 41st Republican vote, Brown dissolved Democrats’ filibuster-proof majority and threw their agenda into an unexpected state of disarray.

Though Democrats were quick to counter that the election results were not so much a referendum on healthcare as a general expression of dissatisfaction with the nation’s economy and unemployment numbers, as the week progressed they appeared to heed the special election’s warning to slow down on healthcare reform. From President Obama to House and Senate leaders to rank-and-file moderates and liberals, Democrats cited the need to let the dust settle and calmly reassess public opinion and their options for moving forward on the hot-button legislative issue.

NEW OPTIONS

Before Brown’s victory, Democratic leaders were holed up behind closed doors, hammering out a compromise between the House healthcare reform bill (H.R. 3962) and the Senate bill (H.R. 3590). Given that any compromise bill would have to return to the Senate for final approval before reaching President Obama’s desk, Tuesday’s loss of the 60th Democratic vote effectively closed the door on those negotiations.

Once the President and other key Democrats made clear that they will not try to ram a compromise bill through the Senate before Senator-elect Brown is seated, the majority party appeared to have several options at its disposal in order to complete work on healthcare reform in the coming weeks.

In the first widely-discussed plan, the House would pass the Senate bill without any changes, negating the need for another Senate vote and sending it directly to President Obama's desk. Congressional leaders could then package agreed-upon changes to the Senate bill into another bill and pass that using the budget reconciliation process – a procedural maneuver that only requires 51 votes for Senate passage. While initially viewed as the best option by many Democrats, on Thursday House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) stated that she did not have the 218 votes within her caucus to pass the Senate legislation as is, due to widespread and varied opposition to specific provisions in H.R. 3590.

By the end of the week, momentum appeared to be gathering for a scaled back approach. Speaker Pelosi stressed the possibility that the House could move on a less comprehensive healthcare bill containing the more politically popular portions of its original bill. Rank-and-file Democrats conveyed a similar message, citing a piecemeal approach that could include provisions such as accountability for private insurance companies, a so-called “bill of rights” for patients, and medical malpractice reform.

WHAT’S NEXT?

Congress and the nation will hear from President Obama this Wednesday evening during his widely anticipated State of the Union address. Originally the goal date for completion of healthcare reform legislation, the address will now serve as a chance for the President to recalibrate his agenda and retool his message to the American public – an effort that is largely expected to focus on jobs and the economy. In addition, the President will likely lay out a scaled back healthcare agenda that could incorporate measures he pressed for late last week, including steps to decrease healthcare costs, insurance buying pools and not allowing insurers to deny coverage due to pre-existing conditions.

Meanwhile, House and Senate leaders will continue to seek a new path forward on healthcare, in an effort to salvage at least some part of the legislative priority they spent an overwhelming amount of time and political capital on throughout the past year.

At this point, healthcare reform’s end game is anything but clear, and we will continue to monitor this extremely volatile situation and bring you timely and relevant updates as new developments occur.

Source:lexology.com/l

Roloson makes 41 saves, Schremp scores in shootout to lift Isles over Blue Jackets 2-1

UNIONDALE, N.Y. — Rob Schremp had just one goal in his 18 games with the New York Islanders this season.

Even so, Islanders coach Scott Gordon called for Schremp when their game against Columbus went to a shootout, and the 23-year-old responded by scoring the extra session's only goal to give New York a 2-1 win over the Blue Jackets on Tuesday night.

"He's one of our most skilled players," Gordon said. "His hands are second to none on our team. It wasn't a hard decision to pick him for the shootout."

Dwayne Roloson made 41 saves and Josh Bailey scored his first goal in more than a month for the Islanders.

R.J. Umberger's backhand goal with 10:13 left in regulation salvaged a point for the Blue Jackets, who are 2-13 in December and have lost 10 of 11.

The Islanders won for just the third time in the last eight home games while the Blue Jackets lost their 12th straight on the road.

"We're finally getting everything we need to do at home," Roloson said. "For us the simpler we keep our game, the better we are."

Schremp, who has just one regulation goal in 18 games, beat Steve Mason off a forehand deke after Jeff Tambellini and Frans Nielsen shot wide.

Mason made 24 saves.

In the shootout, Roloson made pad stop on Kristian Huselius, Rick Nash and Fedor Tyutin to secure the win.

"That's from being lucky and knowing the guy for a while," Roloson said. "Rick likes to do a couple of different things. I just tried to stay with him as best as I could."

Columbus played its third straight one-goal game. The Jackets beat the Detroit Red Wings 1-0 Monday and earned points in two consecutive games for the first time since Dec. 9-10.

"We're playing better defensively and that's huge for this team," Umberger said. "For so long we struggled giving up 5-6 goals. We scored so many but we couldn't keep that pace up. The defence is getting there and we have to build off it."

Bailey's rebound goal snapped his 14-game goalless streak and opened the scoring 10:04 in.

Mason made the initial save, deflecting Kyle Okposo's high-slot wrist shot with the top of his glove. The puck trickled behind the netminder as Bailey crashed the right post and knocked it past the goal line despite defenceman Jan Hejda's heavy pressure.

"I completely saw it," Mason said. "It just hit off my glove and the perimeter of my glove bent in and it flipped over. It's frustrating to have a goal like that go in because of an equipment thing."

The goal was credited to Okposo before being changed, making it Bailey's first score since Nov. 27 against Pittsburgh.

Mason kept the Blue Jackets down just a goal with back-to-back quality saves against Schremp and Matt Moulson.

Roloson was even sharper, turning aside 14 shots in each of the opening two periods. The 40-year-old had 40 or more saves for the second time this season.

"He hasn't had too many off nights," Gordon said. "Since the first month he's really elevated his game and has given us a chance to win almost every game."

The Blue Jackets tied the game at 9:47 of the third. Nash kept the puck alive at the blue-line with a dump-in and Umberger collected it and moved around Richard Park before firing a spinning backhand from the low right circle for his 13th goal.

The Islanders power play is 1-for-37 in the past nine games.

New York controlled play in overtime, holding a 4-2 shot advantage punctuated by Bailey's shot off the post in the final minute.

NOTES: The Islanders' last shootout was Nov. 14 at Florida. ... D Milan Jurcina and F Chris Clark made their Columbus debuts one day after the Blue Jackets acquired the pair in trade with the Washington Capitals. ... Islanders LW Jeff Tambellini returned to the lineup after being a healthy scratch the previous nine games. C Nate Thompson (shoulder) did not play and is expected to be out 1-2 weeks. ... Jurcina was selected to play for Slovakia in the upcoming Vancouver Olympics. He played in 2006, too.

Source:AFP

Give Homeland Security role in U.S. visas: Senator

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Homeland Security Department rather than the State Department should handle U.S. visas overseas to meet security threats, the chairman of the Senate homeland security committee said on Sunday.

Barack Obama

Connecticut independent Joe Lieberman raised the idea during a discussion on ABCs "This Week" of the attempted bombing of a Detroit-bound plane on Dec 25.

"I believe, incidentally, that we ought to take a look at taking the visa application and admission responsibility from the State Department. It doesn't really fit with foreign policy anymore," he said.

"And in an age of terrorism, I think the Department of Homeland Security ought to be handling visas abroad."

The 23-year-old Nigerian accused of the attempted bombing, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, held a multiple-entry U.S. visa issued in London, according to a statement by his family.

Leaders of the Senate committee say they will convene a hearing this month to examine airline security.

The committee's top Republican, Susan Collins of Maine, said on "This Week" the State Department should have revoked Abdulmutallab's visa after his family told U.S. officials they were worried about his activities.

The Homeland Security Department was to take control this month of a visa program for flight school students.

Foreign citizens from all but 35 countries, mostly in Europe but also including Australia, New Zealand, Japan and South Korea, must obtain a U.S. visa to visit the United States but a visa does not guarantee entry. Some 5.8 million non-immigrant visas were issued in 2006, the most recent year listed on a State Department site on the Internet.

Source:reuters.com/

After passing 2 health bills, Hill must now build bridge

WASHINGTON - -- Even as Senate Democrats celebrated passing landmark health care legislation last week, they knew the arm-twisting and dealmaking wasn't close to being over.

The $871 billion Senate measure, which passed early Christmas Eve in a taut, party-line vote, now must be reconciled with a $1 trillion House version that passed in early November. While the two bills are more alike than different, working out the kinks won't be an entirely smooth process.

What form that process will take also remains unclear. Typically, differences are ironed out in a joint House-Senate conference committee. But last week, sentiments on Capitol Hill were moving away from such a formal structure in favor of a looser negotiating framework that could allow greater flexibility to fashion a compromise.

And because Republicans will play no role in shaping the final product, Democrats are free to do as they see fit -- which could mean a handful of leaders from both houses, along with key committee chairs, will hammer out a deal behind closed doors with the goal of sending a bill to President Barack Obama by early February. Both the House and the Senate will have to vote again on the measure before that happens.

Members of the Obama administration, including the White House chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, will also be heavily involved in the talks.

"We've got two bills, one in the House, one in the Senate; they're 95 percent similar," White House deputy press secretary Bill Burton said Thursday. "We're going to be actively working to iron out the rest of the differences and get a bill passed and signed."

Regardless of the format, the Senate is expected to have the upper hand in any negotiations, because Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., needs the vote of every one of the 58 members of his caucus along with the two independents in the chamber to ward off a Republican filibuster.

Senators such as Joe Lieberman, an independent from Connecticut, and Ben Nelson, a Democrat from Nebraska, whom Reid courted until the last minute, have already pledged to withdraw their support if the bill deviates too much from the Senate version.

For Reid and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., the challenge will come in keeping Senate moderates on board without triggering defections from House liberals, who are aggrieved that the Senate bill dispensed with cherished provisions such as a government-run insurer -- the "public option" -- that would compete with private companies.

But no one on Capitol Hill seems to believe that the lack of a public option will be a deal-breaker. And Pelosi and other House leaders will have a simple message for intransigent members: Do you want to be the one who keeps a historic health care bill from the president's desk?

It's also possible that the more the final bill begins to resemble the Senate version, the greater the chance that some of the 39 centrist Democrats in the House who voted against the bill could come on board.

Both versions of the bill set up insurance exchanges, where people could buy health policies with the help of federal subsidies. Both expand the reach of the Medicaid program and both impose new rules on insurers, including prohibiting them from rejecting customers based on their medical history.

But there are some significant differences. A key sticking point in the talks may be the issue of abortion coverage and the federal subsidies. The more restrictive House bill prohibits anyone receiving subsidies from buying an individual policy that covers abortion through the new insurance exchange. The Senate bill would only prohibit the use of federal funds for such coverage and would require insurance companies to segregate public and private funds.

Another potential flash point involves how each version is financed. The Senate bill partially relies on taxes on high-end, so-called Cadillac insurance plans -- a tax bitterly opposed by labor unions. The House bill imposes a surcharge on Americans who earn more than $500,000 a year and families earning more than $1 million.

House liberals may seek to extract some other changes to the Senate bill in return for jettisoning the public option, including increasing the amount of the subsidies or moving up the date the new insurance exchanges would take effect one year, to 2013.

How those exchanges would operate is another disparity: House Democrats want that exchange to be a national one, while the Senate bill calls for a state-based system.

The talks could be heated, especially after House leaders have pledged not to "roll over" for the Senate. But it was clear at the end of last week that even the liberals weren't drawing lines in the sand and were ready to deal.

"It doesn't have to be called a public option," said Rep. Lynn Woolsey, D-Calif., co-chairwoman of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. "The main issue for Democrats in the House is affordability."

Janet Hook of the Tribune Newspapers Washington Bureau contributed to this report.

Source:chicagotribune.com