2 congressmen join healthcare bandwagon
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Two Democrats on Friday became the latest members of the House to announce that they will vote for the healthcare insurance overhaul as Democrats continued their cajoling ahead of this weekend’s expected vote.
In what was expected to be a parade of announcements, Rep. John Boccieri, of Ohio, said he will vote for the bill, a shift since he opposed the bill in the fall.
Boccieri said he was voting for the bill because of the 39,000 people in his district without insurance and the 9,800 living with pre-existing conditions who were just one medical emergency away from bankruptcy.
Rep. Eliot L. Engel, whose district includes the Bronx and Westchester County, announced on MSNBC that he will vote for the bill. Engel, who voted for the House bill last fall, had been threatening to oppose the current version amid questions about how much New York would receive from the federal government for Medicaid.
“I have always been in favor of healthcare reform,” Engel said. “I think it’s something the country needs. I think it’s something we need to do. My question was, how is my state and how are people that need the help treated? In the House bill that we passed, it was fair and equitable; the Senate bill was not.
“Upon reviewing the bill, I am satisfied that the bill has moved a great deal towards the House bill in terms of compensating my state and doing the right thing for healthcare. So I determined this morning -- and this is the first time I’m announcing it -- that I will vote for the bill,” Engel said.
Engel’s decision came as Democrats scurried to secure the needed 216 votes for Sunday’s expected vote on healthcare overhaul. Most counts indicate that Democrats are within striking distance of that goal.
“Every vote around here is a heavy lift,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, of California, said. “We don’t have a rubber-stamp Congress or a rubber-stamp [Democratic] caucus. So, we have our full airing of issues.”
President Obama, who postponed an Asia trip to be on hand to lobby lawmakers, will go to Fairfax, Va.. for his fourth, and presumably his last, campaign-style rally. He has already visited Pennsylvania, Missouri, and Ohio.
The current bill would cost $940 billion over 10 years, according to the preliminary Congressional Budget Office estimate. It calls for mandated insurance for an additional 31 million Americans, subsidies and tax breaks to make coverage affordable and the creation of exchanges to increase competition. It also includes a host of consumer-oriented requirements on insurance companies to prevent pre-existing conditions from being used as an excuse to curtail coverage.
The House is scheduled to act on Sunday. The Senate will have to also act on 153 pages of revisions to the bill it passed just before Christmas.
Republicans have said they will fight in both chambers to keep the measure from becoming law.
--Noam N. Levey, reporting from Washington
--Michael Muskal
