Senators pushed ahead Thursday on what were supposed to be the easy parts of sweeping health care legislation — and quickly found out almost nothing about overhauling the system is uncontroversial.
First up for the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee were amendments to improve quality and efficiency. But the debate quickly shifted to the overall cost of enacting President Barack Obama’s top domestic priority of reshaping the nation’s health care system to bring down costs and extend insurance to 50 million Americans who lack it.
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“You could end up with a bill that’s easily headed to a $2 trillion price tag,” complained Sen. Judd Gregg, R-N.H., as he offered an amendment that would require proof that various quality measures such as training and identifying best practices would actually save money.
The committee rejected his amendment, as Sen. Barbara Mikulski, D-Md., accused him of trying to “throw sand in the gears.”
The committee was on its second day of work on a 600-plus-page bill, but the first day of real work after Wednesday’s session was entirely given over to speechmaking. Elsewhere in the Capitol senators on the key Finance Committee delayed their own voting session as they struggled to slash costs to under $1 trillion over 10 years.
Senators on the Finance Committee, considered Congress’ best hope of producing a bipartisan bill, were meeting behind closed doors Thursday for further negotiations.
“We’ll be ready when we’re ready, but we’re not there yet,” Finance Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont., said Wednesday.
“This is the first time that I had to kind of say we haven’t met a deadline,” said Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa, top Republican on the key Senate Finance Committee.
The Finance Committee was supposed to release draft legislation Wednesday and begin voting on it next week. But the committee announced that votes would wait, possibly until after July 4, as senators sought to retool their proposals to cut the cost by more than one-third, from an initial $1.6 trillion to less than $1 trillion.
With Kennedy absent from the Capitol after a diagnosis of brain cancer, his committee met under the leadership of Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn. Senators were considering lengthy bill plus 388 amendments, but with the most contentious issues — whether to create a new public plan to compete with the private market, and whether to require employers to cover their workers — still unwritten.
The legislation would create a new insurance marketplace where people could shop for coverage plans with help from government subsidies.
As written, it would cost some $1 trillion but still leave 37 million people uninsured, and Republicans are deeply skeptical. The health committee is scheduled to meet daily and was supposed to finalize the bill by the end of next week, but after Wednesday’s session Dodd backed away from that deadline.
“We’ll see how it goes. I’m interested in getting this done but I’m interested in getting it right,” Dodd said. “I’m not time-driven to the point where at all cost that has to be done that day.”
Committee hearings in the House are set to begin next week with legislation to be unveiled as early as Friday.
