On Friday night, Rich Lowry wrote that health care reform “is really tottering now.” That seems like a crazy possibility considering how hell-bent the White House and other Democratic leaders have been about passing something, anything. But let’s look at the situation report.
Senate Republicans are drawing attention to the fact that after 13 days of debate on the Senate’s health care reform bill, and the Senate has only voted on eight amendments. Democrats are basically holding up their own bill because they’re terrified that an amendment by Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., to allow prescription drug reimportation will pass. If that amendment — offered by a Democratic senator no less — passes, then the White House’s secret deal buying off the pharmaceutical industry will fall apart, and then the powerful and wealthy prescription drug industry will come out against health care reform full-force with potentially disastrous consequences.
So Senate Democrats are holding up progress on their own bill while they figure out what to do. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid spent last week feeding the press a story that some big “deal” on health care was in the works and the legislation was progressing nicely. But as of Friday, Assistant Majority Leader Sen. Dick Durbin said publicly he was “in the dark” about the details of any deal that had been reached and if he doesn’t know, who does? Further, Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., said that the main Democratic proposal being bandied about — exapnding Medicare — was a “non-starter.” The health care deal may not even exist, even though Reid has been sacrificing a good deal of credibility trying to convince people it does.
In fact, Nelson is so terrified of the steep Medicare cuts already in the bill that he’s offered an amendment to exempt three Democratic counties in South Floria with large retirement populations from Medicare cuts. Ed Morrissey wonders:
While Democrats insist that $500 billion in cuts to Medicare (primarily targeting Medicare Advantage) won’t cut anyone’s benefits, Sen. Bill Nelson (D-FL) insisted on language that exempted three heavily Democratic counties in his home state from the cuts. If those massive cuts to the program won’t hurt people on Medicare Advantage, why did Nelson fight to get exemptions for Palm Beach, Dade, and Broward counties? Hmmmmm…….
Meanwhile, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Service’s Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) released a report Friday about Democrats plan to cut Medicare, which said the Senate’s health care bill increase health care spending over 10 years and that Democrats’ plan to save money with Medicare cuts “may be unrealistic.”
Also over the weekend, Joe Lieberman apparently notified Reid he would be filibustering any bill that contains a Medicare expansion — a move that so terrifies health care reform supporters that the Washington Post’s Ezra Klein actually said — I’m not making this up — that Lieberman’s decision was tantamount to being “willing to directly cause the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people” and citing statistical nonsense as the basis of his histrionic claim.
If the CBO’s soon-to-be-forthcoming report on Medicare expansion takes a similarly negative tone — and the CBO raised red flags about the possibility of expanding Medicare just last year — Democrats could be dead in the water on health care reform. Stay tuned!
