Diagnoses vary in Washington, D.C., on status of health care reform

While no one is ready to declare that health reform initiatives being weighed by Congress are dead, Democrats and Republicans have very differing views of the condition of one final piece of comprehensive legislation.

Members of the White House took to the television airwaves Sunday (Jan. 24) to defend the months of work by both members of the Senate and House and continue to champion the need for health care reform, despite last week’s election of Scott Brown as the Republican successor to the Massachusetts Senate seat held by the late Ted Kennedy.

Valerie Jarrett, a White House advisor, told NBC’s Meet the Press that Brown’s election, and the end of a filibuster-proof Senate, does not spell the end for reform efforts.

Jarrett said President Barack Obama will continue to “fight for the American people” and that the same climate that spurred reform – escalating costs and premiums and loss of coverage due to pre-existing conditions – remain.

“[The president is] going to fight for trying to get as absolutely as much as he can to reduce the cost of health care, to provide insurance, provide security and safety for those folks who have insurance now, all of the core principles that we set forth at the very beginning of the process; core principles, I might add, that were included in both the bill that was passed by the Senate and the bill that was passed by the House,” she said.

White House Senior Advisor David Axelrod shared a similar message on ABC’s “This Week,” indicating that a recent Washington Post poll on Brown’s win indicates that the majority of people still want health care reform.

“They want us to address their concerns with the program, and they want Brown to come and work with us and not be obstructionist,” he said. “That was very clear in the polling.”

Axelrod added that “the foolish thing to do would be for anybody else who supported this to walk away from it, because what’s happened is, this thing’s been defined by insurance company – insurance industry propaganda, the propaganda of the opponents, and an admittedly messy process leading up to it…But the underlying elements of it are popular and important.”

The need to ‘start over’
While the White House seeks to press on, Republicans want to restart the whole reform effort from the beginning.

Mitch McConnell
On “Meet the Press,” Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell said the message in Massachusetts was “absolutely” clear.

“What we really need to do is start over,” McConnell, of Kentucky, said. “The American people had a victory in Massachusetts, and they were sending us the message ‘stop and start over.’”

McConnell added that there is not one Republican who would vote for any Democratic health care reform initiative that currently exists.

“Well, this comprehensive bill? Of course not. You know, the American people are overwhelmingly opposed to it,” he said, hesitant to deem the current bills as “dead.”

Meanwhile, Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.), who last year compared stopping Obama’s reform efforts to “his Waterloo,” told “This Week” that what happened in Massachusetts last week was part of “an American awakening.”

“The Republicans want to work with the Democrats on improving health care, focusing on jobs,” he said. “There are a number of other priorities. But for this first year, the president really believed that he could steamroll the Republicans, not even have us in the same room, and in the process, he was steamrolling the American people, not listening to what they were saying.”

DeMint added that “hopefully, the president will stop this effort to take over our health care system,” and refocus his efforts on jobs and the economy.
Source:ifawebnews.com/

C-SPAN trying for camera access on healthcare

Remember when candidate Barack Obama promised in 2008 that the healthcare reform debate would be held in full view of the "C-SPAN cameras" as part of his pledge of a new transparency in government?

It hasn't exactly happened that way, has it? And now, with Democratic leadership in the Senate and House promising to take the process of reconciling the the two bills into even deeper darkness, C-SPAN has released a letter from CEO Brian Lamb showing that it isn't cable TV's fault that Americans are being kept from bearing witness to the creation of one of the most sweeping pieces of legislation in four decades.

Here's a letter Lamb sent to Democratic leadership promising any and all C-SPAN resources to telecast negotiations on the final healthcare bill. Read it and understand who is cutting the American public out of this process. I have been writing for months about the outstanding job C-SPAN has been doing in trying to take viewers behind the closed doors of this process -- despite the efforts of Democratic leadership to keep the cameras at bay.

Here's the letter dated Dec. 30, 2009. After reading it, please let me know how it makes you feel.



The Honorable Nancy Pelosi The Honorable Harry Reid

Speaker Majority Leader

United States House or Representatives United States Senate



The Honorable John Boehner The Honorable Mitch McConnell

Minority Leader Minority Leader

United States House of Representatives United States Senate



Dear Speaker Pelosi:

Representative Boehner:

Senator Reid:

Senator McConnell:



As your respective chambers work to reconcile the differences between the House and Senate health care bills, C-SPAN requests that you open all important negotiations, including any conference committee meetings, to electronic media coverage.



The C-SPAN networks will commit the necessary resources to covering all of these sessions LIVE and in their entirety. We will also, as we willingly do each day, provide C-SPAN’s multi-camera coverage to any interested member of the Capitol Hill broadcast pool.



Since the initial introduction of the America’s Affordable Health Care Act of 2009 in the House and the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act in the Senate

C-SPAN has televised literally hundreds of hours of committee hearings, mark ups and floor debate on these bills for the public to see. And importantly, we have archived all of this video for future generations to study in the C-SPAN Video Archives.



President Obama, Senate and House leaders, many of your rank-and-file members, and the nation’s editorial pages have all talked about the value of transparent discussions on reforming the nation’s health care system. Now that the process moves to the critical stage of reconciliation between the Chambers, we respectfully request that you allow the public full access, through television, to legislation that will affect the lives of every single American.



We hope you will give serious consideration to this request. We are most willing to employ the latest digital technology to make the cameras, lights and microphones as unobtrusive as possible.



Please contact me if I can answer any questions.

Source:baltimoresun.com/

White House marshals resources to complete health reform

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The fate of healthcare reform lies in the hands of the U.S. Congress, but the White House will use every weapon it has to steer its top policy priority through the legislature and into law.

Healthcare Reform

President Barack Obama and aides will make the public case for reform in speeches, interviews and blog posts in the weeks ahead.

"I'll be rolling up my sleeves and spending some time before the full Congress even gets into session, because the American people need it now," Obama said in an interview with PBS' "Newshour" that aired on December 23.

But they will also work behind the scenes to push Democrats to get over any objections and back a plan resembling the one passed by the U.S. Senate.

"The White House has some serious human assets to deploy, not only a skilled and experienced legislative relations staff, but also a chief of staff who understands the way the Hill works and is pretty good at the carrots and sticks game," said William Galston, a former policy adviser to President Bill Clinton now at the Brookings Institution.

Obama's chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, was a veteran of the Clinton White House who became a power player in the House of Representatives and is considered a master of the art of cutting back-room deals.

"The White House has been preparing for this end game for a long time," Galston said.

After passing their own versions of the sweeping push to overhaul the $2.5 trillion U.S. healthcare industry, the House and Senate must now merge them into a single bill, which each has to pass before sending it to Obama.

Obama and his fellow Democrats have trumpeted progress on the healthcare overhaul as a major achievement, but they must resolve significant differences between the House and Senate bills and, after months of wrangling, do it quickly.

"We're like 90 percent there. We're really close," said David Kendall of Third Way, a centrist Washington think tank that supports the healthcare bill. "The differences that remain are significant, but they're not overwhelming."

HOW TO PAY FOR IT

The biggest difference between the House and Senate bills is how they are financed, and analysts said that disparity could be the highest hurdle for congressional negotiators.

The House would impose a 5.4 percent surtax on high-income Americans. The Senate has a 40-percent excise tax on high-cost "Cadillac" insurance plans, strongly opposed by labor unions typically among the Democrats' strongest supporters.

Kendall said House and Senate differences over how to pay for reform could be overcome by doing more to control costs in the final bill and exempting some Cadillac insurance plans for union members doing high-risk jobs.

The White House says negotiations will not force the House to accept all of the Senate Democrats' plan. "There are elements of it (the House bill) that we definitely like," one administration official said.

Democrats want to deliver a major legislative victory for Obama and sell the public on what they believe are the benefits of reform, well before they fight to preserve their majorities in the House and Senate in November elections.

"A lot of Democrats are running scared right now, they're looking for help and they are looking for a safety net and the White House is in a position to provide both," Galston said.

The administration is determined not to be sidetracked by security concerns after the botched December 25 airliner bombing and efforts to cut high unemployment.

"When you're president of the United States you've got to be able to walk and chew gum at the same time," deputy White House press secretary Bill Burton told reporters.

Obama was meeting in the Oval Office on Tuesday with House Democratic leaders, and leaders of the Democrats in the Senate were to participate by teleconference.

With Republicans staunchly opposed to the reform plans -- only one House Republican backed its bill and no Senate Republicans voted in favor -- the final measure is likely to be negotiated among Democratic leaders and the White House.

They are likely to skip a formal House-Senate conference that would include Republicans who could use the process to slow down the bill.

That plan has been criticized as contravening Obama's promises to run an open government and include Republicans in the process, but Democrats contend that skipping formal conferences has become common practice on Capitol Hill.

Source:reuters.com/

Pingree comments on Senate health reform bill

Healthy Fat Senator
WASHINGTON, D.C. (NEWS CENTER) - Rep. Pingree calls the Senate passage of a health reform bill "an early Christmas present."

The Senate passed their version of a health reform bill around 7:20 on Thursday morning. Both Maine Senators voted against the legislation.

The House of Representatives had passed another version of the bill in early November.

The next step is to reconcile the differences between the bills. The House bill, for instance, includes a public option while the Senate bill does not.

Maine's First District Representative, Chellie Pingree (D), issued this statement Thursday morning:

"The vote by the Senate today is like an early Christmas present. It puts us one step closer to real, significant health care reform. Although I still believe in the need for a public option like the one in the bill we passed in the House, both bills will rein in costs, improve coverage for those who already have it and put health care within reach for millions of individuals and small business who currently can't afford it."

"There is still much work to be done to reconcile the bill the Senate passed today with the House version, but I am confident we can work out the differences and I look forward taking a final vote on health care reform early next year."

Source:wcsh6.com/

Senate Republicans fight health care reform

WASHINGTON D.C. -- As Senate Democrats prepare for what's expected to be a health care victory Thursday morning, Republicans today took one last shot a defeating the legislation.

They argued that the bill will increase health care costs for Americans as insurance companies off load the new fees contained in the $871 billion plan.

Missouri's Kit Bond, who chairs a subcommittee on small business, said the democrat's bill will kill job creation by imposing limits on the number of people small businesses can employ and the wages they pay to qualify for health care tax credits.

"The majority party doesn't want Americans to know they're getting a lump of coal for Christmas,” Bond said. “This is Chicago-style politics at its worst, a 2,700 page backroom deal, written behind closed doors, full of political pay offs, vampire votes in the dead of night, all to pass a health care bill before Christmas.”

President Obama told the Washington Post the Bill accomplishes 95 percent of what he wanted.

Source:connectmidmissouri.com/

Health care bill snowed in by political shenanigans in Washington, D.C.

WASHINGTON - With a snowstorm descending on Washington Friday, Capitol Hill was already gridlocked by a blizzard of stunts, insults and obstruction as Democrats struggled to pass a health reform bill.

Republicans started the day early in the morning attempting to filibuster a war-funding plan as a way to delay moving to health care, prompting cries of outrage.

"They are threatening to turn their backs on America's troops at wartime," said Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.). "Rarely have I seen such brazen irresponsibility."

Republicans accused Democrats of being rude, and criticized freshman Minnesota Sen. Al Franken for cutting off Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) on the Senate floor when the renegade ex-Dem spoke past his allotted time. "That's how the comity in this body has deteriorated," said Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.). "We've got to stop this."

He and other Republicans accused the majority of trying to rush a process that began last spring. "Apparently it's all going to be sprung on us [Saturday] morning in the middle of a snowstorm," McCain added.

Democrats are desperate to pass the health overhaul by Christmas Eve, but they were still trying to win over their own conservative Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.), and they were trying to keep rebelling liberals in line.

Source:nydailynews.com/