The push for health care reform is moving, so I thought it’d be helpful to have semi-daily “Health on the Hill” updates that should help you keep track of the reform debate and get to the meat of the issue. Enjoy!
Today’s Updates – 12/7/09:
This post was written in part by Amy Minor, CP Intern
The Senate began debate on their health reform legislation last week, holding the first votes on amendments toward the end of the week. One good amendment by Senator Barbara Mikulski (D-MD), which will guarantee women age 40 and older receive mammograms with no out-of-pocket costs, passed 61 – 39. Another amendment by Senator John McCain (R-AZ), which would eliminate the $500 billion cuts to Medicare spending, and if approved, would have stripped out money needed to pay for expanding coverage to tens of millions of uninsured Americans, thankfully failed 58 – 42.
Although the Senate was able to vote on the first amendments of the health care bill, they worked long hours over the weekend struggling to reach agreements on key issues. One of these issues continues to be abortion. Senator Ben Nelson (D-NE) has said that he will withdraw his vote for the health care bill, if it does not contain an abortion amendment similar to the Stupak amendment, which was passed in the House version of the health care bill last month. He is expected to present his amendment this afternoon. (Make sure you contact your Senator and urge them to vote NO on this amendment to avoid restricting women’s rights to abortion!)
If Nelson decides to vote against the bill, this puts Majority Leader Reid in a difficult position because he cannot lose a single vote from his Democratic caucus and still pass the bill overall without picking up Republican support. Reid will not gain Republican support for reform unless he further waters down the public option – a key issue for a handful of Democratic Senators and the key to whether or not one Republican – Olympia Snowe of Maine – will vote for health care reform.
Senator Reid and about 10 other senators spent Sunday afternoon discussing yet another compromise on the public option. This time reducing the idea down to a pathetic excuse for a solution. The new compromise centers around replacing the public option with a new health insurance exchange similar to the one offered to federal employees, with insurance plans run by non-profits –who already dominate the market and do not reduce the cost of insurance. In an effort to get 60 votes to pass health care reform, this is where we find ourselves: picking apart a provision that could have provided incredible insurance access and affordability to millions of Americans, but will now likely be an already existing, ineffective solution that gets signed into law only to avoid the scary words “government run”.
News Links:
Chances shrink for pure public option
Senate Democrats in search of a health reform compromise Sunday zeroed in on a new alternative to a government-run insurance plan — signaling that the chances a final bill will include a pure public option are diminishing.
The goal of the current effort is simple: to get sixty votes to overcome a filibuster and pass a bill. Four of the sixty Senators who caucus with the Democrats have expressed, with varying degrees of certainty and specificity, that they don’t like the public option in the current bill. So the search is on for a compromise, any compromise..
Nelson: I’ll Filibuster Without Stupak-Like Amendment
“Now I don’t know that it’s going to come down to that, because I don’t know that Stupak’s not going to pass, number one,” he said. “Number two I don’t know what kind of alternative legislation may be offered as an alternative bill..”
Senate Backs Preventive Health Care for Women
The 61-to-39 vote on health benefits for women would, in effect, override new recommendations from a federal advisory panel that said routine mammograms should begin at age 50, rather than 40.