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Posted: Tue Nov 03, 2009 2:44 pm Post subject: ObamaCare may slip to January 2010
ObamaCare may slip to January 2010
posted at 12:15 pm on November 3, 2009
by Ed Morrissey
The push to overhaul the American medical system may not move forward until after the New Year, Politico reports, which opens a whole new set of questions about the Obama agenda for the 111th Congress. Nancy Pelosi’s new bill and its mushrooming cost will almost certainly get addressed this month, but the real problem is in the Senate — and not just for Senators:
Democrats have blown so many deadlines for getting health reform done this year that insiders are increasingly skeptical they can finish by year’s end — and some even suggest the effort might slip to a new deadline, before the State of the Union address.
The discussions are an acknowledgment that with only two months left in the year, Democrats are still a long way from sending a bill to the president’s desk. The House could take up reform on the floor as early as this week, with a good shot at passing something by Veterans Day.
But in the Senate, Majority Leader Harry Reid is still wrangling with his moderate members to corral 60 votes just to get the debate started. And on Monday, Reid sent a letter to Republicans acknowledging that he is waiting on the Congressional Budget Office’s cost estimates and analysis to finish drafting a bill. Democrats signaled that those estimates would not be ready this week, casting further doubt on their ability to finish reform this year.
Democratic Sen. Kent Conrad said he spoke with CBO Director Doug Elmendorf last week and that it sounded like “it would be quite a while” before the estimates were ready. The news makes a Christmas completion “a challenge,” Conrad said.
Barack Obama knew that he needed to pass this quickly in Congress, which is why he put so much pressure on Capitol Hill to get it done by the August recess — in retrospect, a ridiculous notion. The last thing he needed was having his two big statist agenda items, ObamaCare and cap-and-trade, leaking into an election year Both are widely unpopular with likely voters, but having a full year between their passage and the midterms would have allowed anger to subside, especially since both bills take a couple of years to ramp up their effects.
If the health-care overhaul gets pushed into 2010, that strategy goes out the window — for both bills. The closer their votes come to Election Day, the less enthusiastic red-state Democrats will get about either of them, perhaps especially cap-and-trade. With majorities of likely voters unhappy with both bills, Democrats would be daring the electorate to throw them out of power in the House, and handing the Republicans an easy campaign against big government, high taxation, and undisciplined spending.
That becomes doubly true if the Republicans can pull off the big East Coast sweep tonight, in particular New Jersey. Obama campaigned hard for Jon Corzine, and even a narrow win for the Democrat in a heavily Democratic state will not convince moderates in either chamber that running on Obama’s coattails will help them in the midterms. If Christie wins, expect more Democrats on Capitol Hill to start siding with Joe Lieberman and asking for incremental reforms rather than the comprehensive government takeover proposals being pushed by Pelosi and her progressive allies.
By January, expect a full revolt over ObamaCare and cap-and-trade. And expect the Democrats to look mighty foolish as they choke on items 2 and 3 of their Congressional agenda.
Democrats Trying to Reach Final Deals on Handling of Abortions, Illegal ImmigrantsArticle Comments (49)
By JANET ADAMY
WASHINGTON -- House Democrats are wrestling with how their health-care bill will deal with abortion and immigration issues as they prepare to bring the bill to the floor as soon as Friday.
Democratic leaders in the House warned members that debate on the floor may stretch through the weekend and into next week so the House can vote on the bill before the Nov. 11 Veterans Day holiday. After critics attacked an earlier draft of the health bill during the August recess, Democrats are wary of letting it languish during a break.
(photo) Sen. Roland Burris, Illinois Democrat, prepares to speak Monday about the proposed health-care overhaul at Stroger Hospital in Chicago.
House leaders unveiled their revised 1,990-page bill last week after months of negotiations. The $1.055 trillion measure would expand health insurance to 36 million Americans and create a new government health-insurance plan to compete with private insurers, among other things.
But Democrats are still trying to reach a final agreement on how the bill addresses funding for abortions and insurance coverage for immigrants.
Although the issues are small parts of the legislation, they have become flash points for Republicans and Democrats that could determine whether key lawmakers support the bill.
Some Democrats are concerned that the House bill would allow illegal immigrants to participate in new exchanges designed to help individuals and smaller employers buy insurance.
While those immigrants wouldn't have access to government subsidies to buy insurance, the bill leaves open the possibility that they could participate in the public health-insurance plan if they paid the premiums out of their own pockets.
It is one area where the House bill contrasts with what the White House is seeking in the health-care overhaul. President Barack Obama has pledged that the health overhaul won't apply to people who are in the U.S. illegally.
While the Senate has yet to unveil its most recent bill, the measure that passed through its Finance Committee last month prohibited illegal immigrants from participating in the insurance exchanges.
On abortion, the House bill prevents federal money from being used to pay for abortions through the insurance exchange, except in the case of rape, incest or when the mother's life is endangered. The bill says that, in each market, the insurance exchange should offer at least one insurance plan that covers abortion and one that doesn't.
But some House Democrats argue that such a structure effectively allows federal dollars to underwrite abortions, because the government would be subsidizing the insurance premiums for plans that cover the procedure. They are trying to tighten the language so the funding is more restricted and ban abortion services from the public option.
Supporters of the current proposal say it is consistent with how other laws treat abortion funding, and that it includes protections to separate out the federal subsidies so no premium subsidies go toward abortions.
Republicans are preparing to unveil their own health bill in the next few days. Minority Leader John Boehner (R., Ohio) said Monday that the plan wouldn't seek to prevent health-insurance companies from denying sick people insurance -- a key plank of the Democrats' legislation.
Instead, the bill would allow insurance firms to sell policies across state lines, permit small businesses to pool their risks to bring down costs, change medical-malpractice laws and give state governments more flexibility to pursue rule changes.
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