Senate considers two healthcare amendments
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The Senate spent its second day wrestling with the healthcare overhaul as it considered two amendments, one offered by Republicans who want to return the pending bill to be reworked in committee.
The GOP amendment, offered by Sen. John McCain of Arizona, is expected to fail as the Senate continues its long march through weeks of debate to consider the healthcare bill. It was unclear whether the Senate can meet President’s Obama’s deadline of getting a bill to his desk this year.
The other amendment is a Democrat-backed one, offered by Sens. Barbara A. Mikulski (D-Md.) and Olympia J. Snowe (R-Maine). The amendment gives the government the ability to require health plans to cover additional preventive services such as mammograms and Pap tests.
The amendment is a rare bipartisan effort in what is shaping up as especially nasty partisan divide. Snowe was the only Senate Republican to vote in favor of Democrats’ healthcare legislation in committee, though she voted with fellow Republicans to oppose full debate.
Republicans such as Texas Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison argued that the amendment improperly injects the government into a medical decision that should be made by a patient and her doctor.
But Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada sharply disagreed.
“The Sen. Mikulski amendment also makes clear, no matter what the Republicans claim, that the decision whether or when to get a mammogram should be left up to the patient and the doctor,” Reid said. “That decision should not be made by some bureaucrat, a member of Congress or someone they’ve never met.”
Like other Republicans, McCain argued that the Democrats are trying to cut benefits for seniors, but Democrats maintain they are not cutting benefits, just the rate of growth while trying to eliminate waste, fraud and corruption.
‘Don’t let anybody fool you,” Sen. Max Baucus, of Montana, one of the Democratic floor managers, said. “This bill does not cut Medicare.’
-- Michael Muskal
