House Democrats know they’re going to have to sacrifice many of their priorities when they amend and adopt the Senate health care bill in the coming weeks. And in the last couple days they’ve started taking off the gloves.
“In my view, the House bill is so far superior to the Senate bill, that I would appreciate hearing [President Obama] say that,” said House Rules Committee Chair Louise Slaughter (D-NY) this morning.
Yesterday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi ribbed Obama for backtracking on campaign pledges as the health care debate has dragged on.
As much as the concessions sting, though, House leaders and health care principals continue to hash out just which issues they plan to press hardest for in negotiations with the Senate and the White House.
“I think the major issues are pretty clear, in general terms, what we’re trying to do is get down to what the differences are between the House and the Senate on those issues,” said Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD).
Two issues that seem to be continually on the lips of aides and members are insurance regulation and financing.
The House bill organizes insurance markets at the national level–imposing federal standards on insurance companies in every state. The Senate bill leaves it up to individual states, which have highly variable records of reining in insurance company excesses. “If you’re taking a look, and looking at competition in the system, if you’re taking a look at driving down costs–national exchange versus state exchange is an issue,” said Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-CT)–a proponent of a national insurance exchange structure. “So yes that will be talked about.”
Separately, House leaders want the Senate and White House to budge on the question of how the legislation will be paid for: will the costs of near-universal insurance fall exclusively to the wealthy–as in the House bill–or will the middle class have to bear some of the burden, too, as it would if the Senate’s excise tax on high-end health insurance policies became law.
Asked by TPMDC whether the excise tax would violate Obama’s campaign pledge not to increase taxes on the middle class, DeLauro demurred.
“The issue is, what is going to be affordable for middle class Americans,” she said. “This is what we established at the outset as a goal. It continues to be a goal. That will be a prism through which much of this will be driven.”
