Noticeably absent from the Democrats’ sweeping health care proposal is a plan to create a federal commission that would have overseen insurance rate hikes. President Obama proposed the panel and considered it one of the key elements of his health care reform plan. He came up with the proposal after California’s Blue Cross announced it was raising the rates of some individual policy holders by as much as 39 percent.
But the Senate parliamentarian ruled that the creation of such a commission could not be included the bill, because it violates the budget reconciliation rules under which the Senate must consider the legislation.
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“They wouldn’t allow it under reconciliation so we’ll have to do that separately,” House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Henry Waxman, D-Calif., said.
But passing such a measure will be difficult because the Senate no longer controls 60 votes and would have to find at least one Republican and a few moderate Democrats to go along with such a proposal.
“Look, I believe it will happen,” Waxman said. “We wanted it in the bill but we couldn’t get it.”
Waxman blamed the problem on “unelected officials telling us what we could and could not do under some esoteric rules.”
