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Obama to Offer Health Bill to Ease Impasse as Bipartisan Meeting Approaches

WASHINGTON — President Obama will put forward comprehensive health care legislation intended to bridge differences between Senate and House Democrats ahead of a summit meeting with Republicans next week, senior administration officials and Congressional aides said Thursday.

Democratic officials said the president’s proposal was being written so that it could be attached to a budget bill as a way of averting a Republican filibuster in the Senate. The procedure, known as budget reconciliation, would let Democrats advance the bill with a simple majority rather than a 60-vote supermajority.

Congressional Democrats, however, have not yet seen the proposal or signed on.

The House and the Senate each adopted a version of sweeping health care legislation late last year. But efforts to combine the measures stalled after a Republican, Scott Brown, won a special Senate election in Massachusetts on Jan. 19, effectively stripping the Democrats of the 60th vote they needed to overcome Republican filibusters.

“It will be a reconciliation bill,” one Democratic aide said. “If Republicans don’t come with any substantial offers, this is what we would do.”

Officials said that the White House would post the president’s plan on the Internet by Monday morning. But even as Mr. Obama tries to unite his party behind a single plan, it is unclear that Democrats can muster the needed votes in the House and the Senate given the tense political climate of a midterm election year.

During a conference call on Wednesday night, the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, told the White House chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, and the Senate majority leader, Harry Reid, that she could not agree to a proposal until rank-and-file lawmakers returned from a weeklong recess. A House Democratic caucus meeting is set for Monday evening.

And a senior Senate Democratic aide expressed doubts.

“It has been three weeks since the Massachusetts election, and we have not received a path forward from the White House on health care substance and process that can clear the House and Senate,” the aide said.

Democratic officials said the president’s proposal, like the House and Senate bills, would insure more than 30 million Americans by 2019, at a cost of about $900 billion.

Kathleen Sebelius, the secretary of health and human services, said the president would “take some of the best ideas” from the House and the Senate and “put them into a framework.”

“There will be one proposal,” Ms. Sebelius said.

The president’s plan would require most Americans to obtain health insurance or face financial penalties; it would bar insurers from denying coverage based on pre-existing medical conditions, and it would give tax subsidies to help moderate-income people buy private insurance.

Officials said the president’s bill was expected to include a version of the Senate’s proposed tax on high-cost, employer-sponsored insurance policies. It would reflect a deal reached with labor union leaders to limit the impact of the tax on workers.

More recently, some labor officials have expressed dissatisfaction with that deal, and many House Democrats remain opposed to the excise tax.

Democrats said it was still unclear how the president would deal with other disagreements, including the issue of insurance coverage for abortions.

Abortion remains “a wild card,” said a Democrat on Capitol Hill.

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I am glad to see that he is finally stepping up to the plate.  We could have avoided a year of angst if he had done a bit of this sooner.

I hope the resultant bill does not effectively (financially) negate Roe v. Wade which the Senate version does.

-- Edited by Sanders on Friday 19th of February 2010 02:55:38 PM