From left to right: Former Senate leaders Democrat Tom Daschle and Republicans Bob Dole and Howard Baker say Congress can find a bipartisan solution to healthcare reform.
(David Zalubowski/AP/ File, Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP, Newscom)Photos (1 of 1)
A bipartisan healthcare plan? ‘Yes we can,’ say former Senate leaders.
Democrat Tom Daschle and Republicans Bob Dole and Howard Baker put forth an alternative proposal Wednesday.
By Gail Russell Chaddock | Staff writer/ June 17, 2009 edition
Washington
Three former Senate leaders on Wednesday announced a bipartisan plan for healthcare reform – a counterpoint to the first Senate markup of healthcare legislation, which fell out along sharply partisan lines.
The bipartisan framework includes a requirement for all Americans to purchase health insurance, with a refundable tax credit to offset the cost for lower-income families. The plan offers tax credits for small businesses that offer health benefits and levies fees for employers who do not.
Sens. Tom Daschle (D) of South Dakota, Bob Dole (R) of Kansas, and Howard Baker (R) of Tennessee no longer serve in the Senate, lead their party caucus, or face voters. (Sen. George Mitchell (D) of Maine, the second Democrat on the team, resigned to serve as special envoy to the Middle East in the Obama administration.)
But the logistics of getting to a bipartisan outcome – typically a must to pass major legislation in the Senate – hasn’t changed. It requires flexibility from all sides.
“We are facing a critical moment in our nation’s history,” said Senator Baker, comparing the struggle for healthcare reform to landmark civil rights legislation in the 1960s.
“Health reform can be achieved,” he added. “But in order for that to happen we must work beyond our points of disagreement and focus on reaching bipartisan solutions.”
One of the flashpoints on Capitol Hill is whether or not to tax existing employer benefits – a move that runs afoul of President Obama’s campaign pledge not to add new taxes to families with incomes less than $250,000. But after intense negotiation, the former Senate leaders agreed to cap the tax exclusion at the value of benefits received by members of Congress.
“I think it’s doable in the context of what it is we’re trying to do,” said Senator Daschle, who added that there is no “painless way to do what we’re setting out to do as a country.”
Rather than a federal public option – a nonstarter for Republicans – the panel proposes financial and technical support for states that set up their own plans to compete with private insurers “on a level playing field.”
If after five years private plans aren’t meeting the need for affordable coverage, the president can use new fast-track procedures to set up a federal public plan.
“It wasn’t my first choice – or even second or third,” said Daschle, in a Monitor interview.
“I had a lot of trouble with mandates, just as Tom had trouble with the public plan, but if we can’t compromise how are you ever going to get a bill passed,” added Senator Dole.
Meanwhile, the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee wound up Day 1 of its session on healthcare legislation deeply divided.
“The bill we’ve been presented with is so flawed and expensive we’d be better advised to start over,” said Sen. Lamar Alexander (R) of Tennessee.
“This is as important a debate as we’ve had in a long time, and may have for a long time to come,” said Sen. Christopher Dodd (D) of Connecticut, who took over leadership of the panel in the absence of Sen. Edward Kennedy (D) of Massachusetts, who is away from the Senate for health reasons.
“My goal is to develop a piece of legislation that enjoys as much broad support as possible, but we need to make sure it’s a meaningful piece of legislation,” Senator Dodd said.
Comments
2. Susan Burleigh | 06.18.09
Nice rhetoric. Please let us know what the cap is (”value of tax exclusion at the value of benefits received by members of Congress”).
I’ve never earned more than $27,000/year and have no health insurance.
3. Paul | 06.18.09
There simply is no alternative to a single government provider for health insurance. It may seem expensive, but look at how much it’s costing all of us to pay for the uninsured to go to the emergency room! Asking the insurance industry to rein in costs is like asking the fox to quit eating so many hens but leaving the door open to the hen house.
Single payer. Until we all have the will to do pay more for it in the short run, we’ll all pay more in the long run.
4. Carol | 06.18.09
Ruby–
We have many friends from Canada who come to the US to see a doctor or a specialist because they can’t get into see either in Canada. One friend died because his cancer was untreated.
5. Jim | 06.18.09
Sounds like it’s more “insurance reform” than health care reform. Mandating that all citizens pay for medical insurance does little to address what’s really needed to reform the health-care industry: namely, cost controls on big pharma, profits for big insurance, and to address virtually no upper limits to charges by health care providers. In addition, whatever happened to physicians and other direct providers being able to meet a patient’s need on a humanitarian basis, including accepting payment based on the patient’s ability to pay?
6. Caponer | 06.18.09
It is obvious we want to avoid a shortage in health care providers and in health care systems. What is needed is a limit imposed on both of the amount of money he, she, or it can earn from the system. Doctors, for the most part, are not making a bundle. Pharamaceutical companies are. Insurance companies are. And, medical malpractice lawyers are. So, any plan that does not eliminate these money hogs will only make a bad system worse.
7. Alex Lewin | 06.18.09
Asking all citizens -, or their employers, to pay private health insurance companies robs the people and their employers for the welfare of insurance companies. The health insurance industry has proven itself unworthy of trust and too expensive to justify it’s existence. The private insurance approach failed miserably. As a nation, we spend too much for the quality or quantity of healthcare received. The money goes to expensive duplicative self serving bureaucracies called health insurance companies. Their time has past. Single payer, a government paid healthcare infrastructure, is best for the nation. Call it Socialism if you want to. It sure beats paying welfare for rich corporations.
8. Robert M. | 06.18.09
They are still trying to build a new “house” on a bad foundation. One of reasons medical cost are so high is because doctors and hospitals have to pay huge premiums for malpractice insurance. That’s because patients who are injured by their physicians are suing. They are suing because they no longer get satisfactory results from any form of medical oversight.
The bottom line is that politicians in state legislatures have been interfering with their state medical boards’ ability to respond to patient complaints and provide oversight. Obviously, they would have no reason to do this short of persuasion from lobbyist representing special interests, mostly medical groups.
Congress needs to resolve the oversight problem before implementing a health care plan or patients and the government will end up being ripped off by bad doctors. Things are pretty bad as it is.
9. Lucille Miller | 06.19.09
Let us make health care insurance a little more affordable by eliminating the profits for the insurance health providers. They should not be even concidered in this debate. However, that cannot even be considered, because almost every committee member designing affordable health care are investors in the medical industry. Maybe Senator Chris Dodd and others should recuse themselves from participating in this debate.
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1. Ruby | 06.18.09
Tax credit, thats a joke, for the poor, they do not have an income to tax…so
what other alternatives are available, the emergency room, which puts us back where we started. Why not socialized medicine? or is that a dirty word to the medical profession that cash registered us to the problem we currently enjoy. It works in Canada, why not here…..