Passing Health Care Reform at All Costs
In exchange for their support to overcome a GOP filibuster, moderate Democrats extract big concessions on the public option and abortion coverage for women.
Jul 31, 202073.5K Shares980.1K Views
Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.)(WDCpix)
Unveilinga modified health reform bill on Saturday, Senate Democratic leaders appear to have cobbled together the 60 votes they’ll need to pass the most expansive overhaul to the nation’s health care system in generations. But winning that support comes at a steep cost.
To satisfy Democratic moderates, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) had to drop the public option, the government-run insurance plan many experts argue is necessary to keep insurance costs down, and he had to add an abortion provision that reproductive rights groups say will leave millions of women without comprehensive health coverage.
[Congress1] The compromises are emblematic of the political pickle Democratic leaders have faced all year. Despite commanding the 60-seat majority needed to defeat Republican filibusters, party leaders have quickly discovered that uniting the disparate ideologies and regional interests represented by the diverse troop of Democratic senators is no simple task. The disagreements within their own caucus have led party leaders to dilute some of their top legislative priorities — like credit card reform— and drop others altogether, as was the case with mortgage bankruptcy reform. As The Washington Post’s Joel Achenbach wroteSaturday, “Life at 60 has been awkward for the Democrats.”
Nowhere has that statement rung more true than in the debate over health care reform, where conservative-leaning Democrats have had much greater success watering down the bill than all Republicans combined. For example, to satisfy Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.), who caucuses with the Democrats, the bill scraps the public option, instead proposing the creation of national insurance plans to be contracted by the government to private companies. Lieberman, representing the insurance-industry hub of Connecticut, has said the public plan would be too costly for the government at a time when federal deficits are already at record heights. For many monthshe’s hinged his support for the underlying bill on the absence of a public option — in any form.
Liberals have long said that a public plan is vital for creating competition in the largely uncompetitiveinsurance market, lowering costs and keeping the private insurers honest. Allowing private insurers to continue unchecked, they argue, is to empower the very industry that’s largely to blame for the ills plaguing the nation’s dysfunctional health care system
“Any measure that expands private insurers’ monopoly over health care and transfers millions of taxpayer dollars to private corporations is not real health-care reform,” Howard Dean, former head of the Democratic National Committee, wrotelast week in The Washington Post.
In a huge concession to another moderate holdout, Democratic leaders included a provision that would allow states to ban abortion coverage for women receiving federal subsidies on proposed new, government-organized private insurance marketplaces, dubbed exchanges. Included to win the support of Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.), that provision would also force women seeking abortion coverage to write two separate premium checks to their insurance company, ensuring that no federal funds pay for abortion services by separating the insurance payments. To entice Nelson, Democratic leaders also hikedfederal Medicaid payments to Nebraska by $45 million over the next decade.
The abortion provision drew the immediate condemnation of women’s reproductive rights groups. NARAL Pro-Choice America issued a statement Saturday saying that the compromise is “outrageous,” and the Planned Parenthood Federation of America issued another calling the two-check system “unworkable.”
“There is no sound policy reason to require women to pay separately for their abortion coverage other than to try to shame them and draw attention to the abortion coverage,” said Planned Parenthood President Cecile Richards. “Moreover, it is highly unlikely that insurance companies will be willing to follow such an administratively cumbersome system, leaving tens of millions of women without abortion coverage.”
Nelson, for his part, accepted the criticisms without regret.
“I know these limits on abortion are hard for some people to accept, and I respect those who disagree,” Nelson saidin a statement after the compromise language was agreed to. ”But I would not have voted for this bill without them.”
The sticking points aside, Democratic leaders cheered the overall bill as an effective means to provide health coverage for millions of uninsured Americans while also controlling skyrocketing health-care costs, both public and private. The compromise bill, according tothe Congressional Budget Office, will cut deficit spending by $132 billion over the next decade, and $1.3 trillion in the decade following.
“By creating strong competition, we’ll reduce skyrocketing health care costs that stop thousands of Nevadans and millions of Americans from getting the best possible health care,” Reid said in a statement. “When we pass this bill, we will cultivate a health care system that values quality of care over profits — ensuring that patients receive the care they need and deserve.”
Republicans couldn’t disagree more. Sen. Judd Gregg (N.H.), senior Republican on the Budget Committee, issued a statement Saturday blasting the new bill as “nothing more than a re-hash of expensive and unpopular ideas.”
“The lesson to be learned here is that to secure 60 votes in the Senate, you have to produce legislation that spends more, taxes more, and borrows more,” Gregg said. “A majority of Americans don’t want this kind of new expense, taxation, debt, or intrusion of government. We should step back and come up with a bipartisan plan that will be more effective and affordable.”
With Democratic senators united behind the legislation, however, the GOP opposition is largely inconsequential. Rather, it will likely be House Democrats who will present the next real hurdle to Reid’s bill. Indeed, House leaders have their own ideas about what health reform should look like, and in many areas they differ significantlyfrom the provisions found in the Senate compromise, including the approach to the public option, restrictionson coverage for illegal immigrants, the children’s health insurance program, and even abortion. In fact, reportssuggest that Rep. Bart Stupak (D-Mich.) — who sponsored stringent abortion restrictions in the House bill — was working behind the scenes with Senate Republicans to make the Nelson restrictions even stronger. Stupak has denied knowledge of contacts between his office and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.). These issues set the stage for another showdown within the Democratic Party when the leaders of the two chambers meet to iron out the differences between the bills.
A full year into the fight over health reform, that part of the debate hasn’t even started.
Rhyley Carney
Reviewer
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