Updated The House Energy and Commerce Committee will resume work on major health care legislation on Wednesday, after House leaders and a faction of fiscally conservative Democrats who had stalled the bill apparently reached a compromise after days of fitful negotiations.
Officials who asked not to be identified because of the sensitive nature of the negotiations said the committee’s public mark-up sessions were set to resume at 4 p.m. The fiscal conservatives, members of the Blue Dog Coalition, had blocked the bill because of concerns about its cost and scope.
As the Energy and Commerce Committee prepared to move forward, officials said that the full House would not vote on the health care legislation until September.
Originally President Obama had demanded that the House and Senate each pass a version of legislation before the summer recess. But the Senate last week announced that it would not do so, giving more time for a bipartisan compromise to develop. And because of the disagreements with the Blue Dogs, a vote in the House had seemed increasingly unlikely.
The decision by House leaders to delay a vote until September seemed to reflect a conclusion that it would be easier for rank-and-file lawmakers to engage with constituents over the summer recess without having a bill already approved.
With floor debate still ahead, members of Congress can assure the folks back home in their districts that they will revisit any provisions that raise concerns. Having the bill already approved, would instead leave lawmakers having to defend unpopular provisions including tax increases to help pay for the bill.
Among the key issues under discussion was a request by the Blue Dogs to shield small business owners from onerous penalties should they not provide health insurance benefits to their workers.
The Blue Dogs hold seven seats on the Energy and Commerce Committee, a decisive margin given the near unanimous Republican opposition to the bill.
The announcement that public mark-up sessions would resume came after a meeting at the Capitol on Wednesday between top House officials, including Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and the majority leader, Steny H. Hoyer, the White House chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, and six of the seven Blue Dogs on the Energy and Commerce panel.
The Blue Dogs met with President Obama and other administration officials last week and made some progress, agreeing to include a provision in the bill that would establish an independent commission controlled by the executive branch to help tamp down on Medicare spending.
The Blue Dogs had voiced concern that the legislation did not do enough to slow the steep rise on health care spending, what policy makers call “bending the cost curve.”
Officials said that the work on the bill would resume with a relatively non-controversial section on public health, and that some outstanding disagreements remained under negotiation.
The health care legislation has already been approved by the Education and Labor Committee and the tax-writing Ways and Means Committee. Advancing the bill through Energy and Commerce is the last step before full debate on the House floor, which is now likely to take place in September.
The House is set to adjourn for the summer recess at the end of this week.
Senator Sees ‘Good News’ in Cost Estimate on Compromise Health Bill
By David M. HerszenhornThe chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, Max Baucus, Democrat of Montana, who is leading efforts to develop a compromise health care bill announced Wednesday that negotiators had pared the price-tag to under $900 billion over 10 years and that lawmakers had agreed on ways to cover the cost.
Figuring out how to pay for the legislation, which seeks to broadly expand health coverage to millions of uninsured Americans, had been among the most difficult tasks facing the bipartisan team trying to put together a deal. But Mr. Baucus said a new Congressional Budget Office analysis offered “good news.”
“C.B.O. has reviewed a draft of the health care reform bill we are currently
negotiating,” he said. “Keep in mind the current draft does not include
resolution of several key issues. Nevertheless, the report is encouraging. The
current draft of the bill scores below $900 billion over 10 years, covers 95
percent of all Americans by 2015 and is fully offset.”
By fully offset, Mr. Baucus means that the legislation would not add to the national debt but rather the cost of the bill would be covered through a combination of savings, mostly by reduced spending on Medicare, and new taxes.
And, in a small coup for the Senate negotiators, Mr. Baucus said the new analysis showed that in 2019, the legislation would actually reduce the deficit – a sign that lawmakers had included provisions that would slow the steep rise in health care spending, what President Obama calls “bending the cost curve.”
Late Tuesday, Mr. Baucus had hinted that his group had mostly finished their work on how to pay for the bill. “The costs, I think, are pretty well nailed down,” he said.
Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company