Congressional Democrats are abandoning their massive health care package in the face of strong public resistance manifested in the election of Republican Scott Brown of Massachusetts to the
Senate.
Brown’s victory Tuesday halted the intense backroom negotiations aimed at merging competing House and Senate versions of President Obama’s health plan.
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The bills, developed over more than a year of legislative work, would have expanded coverage for the poor, created a national health insurance plan and paid for it with increased taxes and Medicare
cuts.
“Both of those bills, as they stand now, are dead,” said Rep. Bill Pascrell, D-N.J., after a caucus meeting with panicked House Democrats, who characterized Brown’s win and the message it sent as their party’s Hurricane Katrina. “I got the sense that people want to move on and not look back at the House or Senate bill.”
Democrats pulled the plug two days after Brown’s shocking victory over Democrat Martha Coakley to fill the Senate seat long held by liberal icon Ted Kennedy.
Brown campaigned on the pledge to be the Republicans’ 41st vote in the Senate, enabling the GOP to block the president’s health plan.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., confirmed Thursday that there is not enough support in the House to pass the less expensive Senate version of the Obama plan.
The Senate bill does not include a government-run insurance program but would have forced all Americans to buy insurance and levied a hefty tax on expensive insurance
coverage.
“I don’t see the votes for it at this time,” Pelosi said.
“The worst position for a politician to be in is to say to the public, ‘Open wide and swallow, this is good for you,’ ” said Rep. Gerry Connolly, D-Va., who is president of the House’s politically vulnerable freshman class. “I don’t want to be in this situation and my colleagues don’t either.”
Democrats are now considering a drastically scaled-back plan that could be passed in smaller, separate pieces. It would not include a public option, mandatory insurance or the creation of any new
entitlement programs.
Pascrell said he is proposing a plan that would address insurance malpractice reform, increase insurance competition and bring reforms to the insurance industry.
The bill could be passed in pieces over the course of several weeks and would allow the House to turn its attention to job creation.
“It has appeal to a lot of people,” Connolly said of the idea.
Leadership aides confirmed that Pelosi is considering the piecemeal approach, but there is no agreement on what it should include.
Brown’s election, one top leadership aide said, “has changed the dynamic completely and now we have to regroup and choose the best way forward.”
Republicans are touting their own bill, which would forbid insurance companies to deny coverage because of pre-existing conditions and place limits on medical malpractice lawsuits.
“Republicans are not going to work off of this monstrosity,” Minority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, said of the proposal to retool the president’s plan. “There’s just not enough common ground.”
