Thread: Obama's Own Healthcare Proposal Readied for Launch

Obama's Own Healthcare Proposal Readied for Launch
Friday, 19 Feb 2010 12:25 PM

The White House signaled that an aggressive, all-Democratic strategy for overhauling the nation's healthcare system remains a serious option, even as President Barack Obama invites Republicans to next week's televised summit to seek possible compromises.

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said that Obama plans to have a healthcare proposal that "will take some of the best ideas and put them into a framework" ahead of the Feb. 25 summit. The White House has invited Republicans to bring their own proposals, but GOP leaders have treated the event warily at best.

Meanwhile, Sebelius criticized the nation's largest insurance companies for raising premiums on customers who buy individual policies. She argued that premiums have contributed to "excessive" insurer gains.

The administration's stance could set the stage for a political showdown, with Democrats struggling to enact the president's top domestic priority and Republicans trying to block what many conservatives see as government overreach.

A senior administration official said Democratic congressional leaders have nearly finished efforts to reconcile two health bills, which the House and Senate passed separately last year with practically no Republican help.

Obama will use their legislation to expand coverage to some 30 million and require most Americans to carry insurance as the basis for a proposal that the White House will post online by Monday, three days before the Feb. 25 summit, said the official.

He spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private negotiations.

Obama says he is open to Republican ideas for changing the healthcare system. But many Democrats seriously doubt GOP leaders will support compromises that could draw enough lawmakers from both parties to create a bipartisan majority.

If next week's meeting does not break the logjam, congressional Democrats will face a tough choice. They can pass a highly diluted health care bill or nothing at all, which would send them into the November elections with a high-profile failure despite their control of Congress and the White House.

Or they can use an assertive and contentious tactic, known as reconciliation, to pass a far-reaching health care bill in the Senate without having to face GOP delaying tactics. Democrats lost their ability to block filibusters when Massachusetts Republican Scott Brown won a Senate seat last month.

Both parties have used reconciliation rules in the past. But Republicans have practically dared Democrats to do so on health care, citing polls showing significant opposition to the legislation.

It's unclear whether the House or Senate can muster the necessary votes. Democrats, who now hold 255 of the House's 435 seats, drew only one GOP ally when the House passed its health care bill, 220-215, last November. Since then, one Democrat who voted for the bill has resigned, one has died and a third plans to leave office Feb. 28. Moreover, changes meant to meet Senate demands could peel away enough liberals on one end, and party centrists on the other, to cause the revised bill to fail.

In the Senate, Democrats control 59 seats, and reconciliation rules require only a simple majority. But several Democratic senators have expressed discomfort or outright opposition to using the rules to thwart filibusters on health care.

House Republican leader John Boehner of Ohio said Thursday, "a productive, bipartisan conversation on health care starts with a clean sheet of paper." His office labeled next week's meeting the "summit of all fears."

But at least one moderate Republican was optimistic about the session.

Sen. Susan Collins of Maine said if the summit succeeds, a bipartisan bill could be put together and passed within six weeks. "My advice to our Republican leadership is we should view this as a good faith effort and go in there with a consensus list of provisions that we could support and that would make a difference," she said in an interview with The Associated Press.

House Democrats are insisting on several changes to the bill the Senate passed on Christmas Eve, before Brown was elected to succeed the late Sen. Edward M. Kennedy. The changes include reducing or eliminating a proposed tax on generous employer-provider health plans, and eliminating a Medicaid subsidy aimed only at Nebraska.

Also, some House Democrats who oppose legalized abortion are demanding that the Senate's more permissive language on the topic be replaced by the House provisions. It was unclear Thursday how that might be achieved.

The cost of the legislation — about $1 trillion over 10 years — would be paid for through Medicare cuts and a series of tax increases. House officials said Democratic leaders are not yet pressing wary colleagues to back a healthcare bill under the special procedural rules. That could happen soon, however, if next week's summit fails to produce a bipartisan breakthrough.

House congressional aides said they expect leaders such as Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., to tell colleagues that using all their parliamentary muscle to pass a health care bill — even if it triggers withering criticism from the right — is preferable to facing voters empty-handed this fall.

Source: The Associated Press

http://newsmax.com/Headline/US-Health-C ... /id/350351

Related:
Is the Public Option Making a Comeback?
http://www.alipac.us/ftopict-188876-.html

Obama Keeps All-Democrat Health Care Option
http://www.alipac.us/ftopict-188807-.html

(Danger) House Dems Say Merger of Health Bills is Near
http://www.alipac.us/ftopict-188767-.html

AMERICANS ALREADY TOLD CONGRESS AND OBAMA THEY DO NOT WANT THE HEALTH CARE PROPOSAL THAT HAS ALREADY BEEN DRAFTED CRAFTILY BY THE MARXIST DEMS... IF THEY ARE SERIOUS ABOUT HEALTH CARE REFORM, START OVER WITH HEAVY ENGAGEMENT BY THE CONSERVATIVE REPUBLICANS...

Man (and woman) the phones. Ask your representatives if they got the Massachuesetts memo.

This healthcare bill has been nothing but a waste of time. When people are losing jobs left and right, small businesses struggle to make payroll, no one will be able to make any premium payments, nor afford higher taxes to pay for this. This is nothing more than feeding us ridiculous delusions from the ivory towers crowd.

Obama to spell out new healthcare plan

By Donna Smith Donna Smith – Fri Feb 19, 6:33 pm ET

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Barack Obama is expected to publish his healthcare plan as early as Sunday or Monday, combining features of the two Democratic bills passed by the Senate and House of Representatives, congressional aides and healthcare advocates said on Friday.

The administration's bill will aim to jump-start the stalled healthcare overhaul and comes just days ahead of a planned televised White House summit with congressional Republicans, who are calling on Democrats to scrap the bills and start over with a far less sweeping proposal.

Democrats are struggling to push healthcare legislation over the finish line in the face of sagging public support and solid Republican opposition bolstered by recent election victories in Massachusetts, Virginia and New Jersey.

The legislation the White House will post on its website is expected to reflect common ground negotiated over the past several weeks by House and Senate Democratic leaders.

Those agreements are likely to be combined as a privileged budget reconciliation bill, which only needs a simple 51-vote majority to pass the 100-member Senate instead of the 60-vote supermajority that has become routine in the Senate and gives Republicans power to block the healthcare bill.

"I believe that's the path we are going to take," a senior congressional Democratic aide said.

But it is not clear, even to congressional Democrats, what the White House will include in its legislation and whether Obama will try to add proposals aimed at attracting at least some Republican support.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi have not signed off on any final agreement, several Democratic aides have said.

"We are still waiting for the president to present to Leader Reid and Speaker Pelosi his plan," a Democratic leadership aide told Reuters.

Valerie Jarrett, one of Obama's closest advisers, said the president would post his draft healthcare bill on the Internet in "the next couple of days."

"The president is going to craft what he thinks is a good bill. It's not going to be a perfect bill but it's going to be a good bill," she said at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

FACE-OFF WITH REPUBLICANS

A move to use the budget reconciliation process would fuel Republican opposition even as Obama has called for more bipartisanship in the process.

"If the president is sincere about moving forward in a bipartisan fashion, he must take the reconciliation process -- which will be used to jam through legislation that a majority of Americans do not want -- off the table," said Representative Eric Cantor, the second-ranking House Republican.

The Obama face-off with Republicans will give Democrats an opportunity to try to sell their plan to the public and explain why a sweeping, comprehensive proposal is needed instead of the go slow, step-by-step approach advocated by Republicans.

At a campaign event on Friday for Reid in Nevada, Obama blasted Republicans for opposing his healthcare overhaul. "The Republicans say that they've got a better way of doing it. So, I want them to put it on the table," he said.

"We're going to move forward the Democratic proposal -- we hope the Republicans have one too," Obama said. "And we'll sit down and let's hammer it out. We'll go section by section. America can't solve our economic problems unless we tackle some of these structural problems."

Healthcare advocacy groups are looking to the White House proposal and next Thursday's summit to shore up public support, and Democratic votes, in the push to get comprehensive legislation to Obama this year.

"As soon as the president and (congressional Democratic) leadership are totally together on substance and a strategy, I think the votes will be there," said Ron Pollack, who heads the Families USA healthcare advocacy group.

The administration, congressional Democrats and advocacy groups have been turning up the rhetorical heat on health insurers that have in recent weeks announced huge premium increases against the backdrop of sizable profits and growing numbers of uninsured people.

"The premium increases are a powerful reminder that the healthcare problems are not going away," said David Kendall, a senior health policy advisor at centrist think tank Third Way.

(Additional reporting by Patricia Zengerle in Washington and Jim Finkle in Cambridge, Massachusetts)

(Reporting by Donna Smith; editing by Todd Eastham)

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20100219/pl_ ... ealthcare1

Geeze this a-hole just doesn't give it up! Hey Dumbo Ears! Hear this!

We need jobs!!!!!!!!!!


Stop d!ckin around with "health care"! We don't want it! We don't need it! Jobs and national security should be your TOP priority now!

I'm sorry, but the man has a one track mind....and a dense one at that.