Senate resumes debate on healthcare overhaul
This article was originally on a blog post platform and may be missing photos, graphics or links. See About archive blog posts.
The Senate returned to the healthcare overhaul debate this morning as lawmakers raced a clock counting down to Christmas, the date by which Democrats are aiming to pass a bill.
“The longer the debate over healthcare goes on,” Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky said this morning on the floor of the Senate, “the clearer it becomes that the problem that Democrats are having isn’t with some of the provisions we keep hearing about on the news. The problem is the fundamental opposition of the American people to the core components of the bill, the core of the bill. Americans oppose the Democratic plan because they know it is a colossal mistake.”
Polls on Americans’ attitude to the healthcare debate have jumped up and down like grease on a skillet. But today’s Gallup poll shows the country almost evenly split.
Asked how they would advise their congressmen to vote, 48% of Americans said they would advise a ‘no’ vote, while 46% said they would tell their member of Congress to vote for healthcare legislation. Both percentages include those who gave a firm answer or said they were leaning in that direction.
Democrats this morning continued their work off the floor to craft new language for the measure, language that they hope will allow them to secure the needed 60 votes to pass some form of the bill by next week.
But there continued to be opposition to the latest compromises that effectively eliminate any public option. Former Democratic Party Chairman Howard Dean took to the airways to oppose the Senate bill, arguing that it aids insurance companies more than consumers.
“You will be forced to buy insurance. If you don’t, you’ll pay a fine,” said Dean, a physician who backs a single-payer system run by the government. “It’s an insurance company bailout.” Interviewed on ABC’s “Good Morning America,” he said the bill has some good provisions, “but there has to be a line beyond which you think the bill is bad for the country.”
“This is an insurance company’s dream,” Dean said. “This is the Washington scramble, and it’s a shame.”
Whatever version of the bill passes the Senate, it will need to be reconciled with the House version, which includes a public option, albeit weaker than liberals in that chamber had sought.
Rep. Anthony Weiner, (D-N.Y.), who has been part of the fight for a public option appeared resigned to the provision not making the final cut.
“We can’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good,” Weiner said on CBS’ “Early Show,” “but we are reaching a tipping point.”
Weiner said he hoped that if the Senate passes a bill, a House-Senate conference committee on the two measures would “move away from some of the things the Senate has done and move back to where the House is. You need to contain cost. You do that with a public option.”
-- Michael Muskal
